Leonard and Mr. Burley walked on into the suburbs round the north road from
London, and Mr. Burley offered to find literary employment for Leonard--an
offer eagerly accepted.
Then they went into a public house by the wayside. Burley demanded a
private room, called for pen, ink, and paper; and placing these implements
before Leonard, said, "Write what you please, in prose, five sheets of
letter paper, twenty-two lines to a page--neither more nor less."
"I cannot write so."
"Tut, 'tis for bread."
The boy's face crimsoned.
"I must forget that," said he.
"There is an arbor in the garden under a weeping ash," returned Burley. "Go
there, and fancy yourself in Arcadia."
Leonard was too pleased to obey. He found out the little arbor at one end
of a deserted bowling-green. All was still--the hedgerow shut out the sight
of the inn. The sun lay warm on the grass, and glinted pleasantly through
the leaves of the ash. And Leonard there wrote the first essay from his
hand as Author by profession. What was it that he wrote? His dreamy
impressions of London? an anathema on the streets, and its hearts of stone?
murmurs against poverty? dark elegies on fate?
Oh, no! little knowest thou true genius, if thou askest such questions, or
thinkest that there, under the weeping ash, the task-work for bread was
remembered; or that the sunbeam glinted but over the practical world,
which, vulgar, and sordid, lay around. Leonard wrote a fairy tale--one of
the loveliest you can conceive, with a delicate touch of playful humor--in
a style all flowered over with happy fancies. He smiled as he wrote the
last word--he was happy. In rather more than an hour Mr. Burley came to
him, and found him with that smile on his lips.
Mr. Burley had a glass of brandy and water in his hand; it was his third.
He too smiled--he too looked happy. He read the paper aloud, and well. He
was very complimentary. "You will do!" said he, clapping Leonard on the
back. "Perhaps some day you will catch my one-eyed perch." Then he folded
up the MS., scribbled off a note, put the whole in one envelope--and they
returned to London.
Mr. Burley disappeared within a dingy office near Fleet Street, on which
was inscribed--"Office of the _Beehive_," and soon came forth with a golden
sovereign in his hand--Leonard's first-fruits. Leonard thought Peru lay
before him. He accompanied Mr. Burley to that gentleman's lodging in Maida
Hill. The walk had been very long; Leonard was not fatigued. He listened
with a livelier attention than before to Burley's talk. And when they
reached the apartments of the latter, and Mr. Burley sent to the cookshop,
and their joint supper was taken out of the golden sovereign, Leonard felt
proud, and for the first time for weeks he laughed the heart's laugh. The
two writers grew more and more intimate and cordial. And there was a vast
deal in Burley by which any young man might be made the wiser. There was no
apparent evidence of poverty in the apartment--clean, new, well furnished;
but all things in the most horrible litter--all speaking of the huge
literary sloven.
For several days Leonard almost lived in those rooms. He wrote
continuously--save when Burley's conversation fascinated him into idleness.
Nay, it was not idleness--his knowledge grew larger as he listened; but the
cynicism of the talker began slowly to work its way. That cynicism in which
there was no faith, no hope, no vivifying breath from Glory--from Religion.
The cynicism of the Epicurean, more degraded in his style than ever was
Diogenes in his tub; and yet presented with such ease and such
eloquence--with such art and such mirth--so adorned with illustration and
anecdote, so unconscious of debasement.
Strange and dread philosophy--that made it a maxim to squander the gifts of
mind on the mere care for matter, and fit the soul to live but as from day
to day, with its scornful cry, "A fig for immortality and laurels!" An
author for bread! Oh, miserable calling! was there something grand and
holy, after all, even in Chatterton's despair!