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, 't is for bread."
The boy's face crimsoned.
"I must forget that," said he.
"There is an arbour 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 arbour 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 its 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
humour, 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 manuscript, 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 apartments,--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 sty 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?