"THIS IS LONDON, THIS IS LIFE"
Thus it was that, all unexpectedly, Henry found himself set down one
autumn morning at the homeless hour of a quarter-to-seven, in Euston
station. He was going to stay in some street off the Strand, and
chartered a hansom to take him there. Few great cities are impressive in
the neighbourhood of their railway termini. You enter them, so to speak,
by the back door; and London waves no banners of bright welcome to the
stranger who first enters it by the Euston Road.
But there was an interesting church presently, and on a dust-cart close
by Henry read "Vestry of St. Pancras."
"Can that be the St. Pancras' Church," he said to himself, "where Mary
Wollstonecraft lies buried, and Browning was married?"
Then as they drove along through Bloomsbury, the name "Great Coram
Street" caught his eye, and he exclaimed with delight: "Why, that's
where Thackeray lived for a time!"
Great Coram Street is little accustomed to create such excitement in the
breast of the passer-by. But to the stranger London is necessarily first
a museum, till he begins to love it as a home, and, in addition to dead
men's associations, begins to people it with memories of his own. When
you have lived awhile in Gray's Inn, you grow to forget that Bacon's
ghost is your fellow-tenant; and it is the kind-hearted provincial who
from time to time lays those flowers on Goldsmith's tomb. When you are
caught in a block on Westminster Bridge, with only five minutes to get
to Waterloo, you forget to say to yourself: "Ah, this is the bridge on
which Wordsworth wrote his famous sonnet." You usually say something
quite different.
The mere names of the streets,--how laden with immemorial poetry they
were! "Chancery Lane!" How wonderful! Yet the poor wretch standing
outside the public-house at the corner seemed to derive small
consolation from the fact that he was starving in Chancery Lane.
But to Henry, as yet, London was an extended Westminster Abbey, and
every other street was Poet's Corner. He had hardly patience to
breakfast, so eager was he to be out in the streets; and while he ate,
his eyes were out of the windows all the time, and his ears drinking in
all the London morning sounds like music. At the foot of the street ran
the Thames; he had caught a thrilling glimpse of it as he stepped from
his cab, and had had a childish impulse to rush down to it before
entering his hotel.
At last, free of food and baggage, light of heart, and brimming over
with youth, he stepped into the street. It was but little past eight
o'clock. He had just heard the hour chimed, in various tones of
sweetness and solemnity, from several mellow clocks, evidently hidden
high in the air in his near vicinity. For two or three hours there would
be no editor or publisher to be seen, and meanwhile he had London to
himself. He stepped out into it as into a garden,--a garden of those
old-time flowers in which antiquity has become a perfume full
of pictures.
Yes, there was the Thames! "Sweet Themmes, run softly till I end my
song!" he quoted to himself. Chaucer's, Spenser's, Elizabeth's Thames!
It was a bright morning and the river gleamed to advantage. The tall
tower of Westminster glittered richly in the sun, and the long front of
Somerset House wore a lordly smile. The embankment gardens sparkled and
rustled in morning freshness. Henry drew in the air of London as though
it had been a rose. Here was the Thames at the foot of the street, and
there at the head was the Strand, a stream of omnibuses and cabs, and
city-faring men and women. The Temple must be somewhere close by. Of
course it was here to his left. But he would first walk quietly by the
Thames side to Westminster, and then come back by the Strand. As he
walked, he stepped lightly and gently, as though reverent to the very
stones of so sacred a city, and all the time from every prospect and
every other street-corner came streaming like strains of music magnetic
memories,--"streets with the names of old kings, strong earls, and
warrior saints." If for no other reason, how important for the future of
a nation is it to preserve in such ancient cities as London and Oxford
the energising spectacle of a noble and strenuous antiquity; for there
are no such inspirers of young men as these old places! So much strength
and youth went into them long ago that even yet they have strength and
youth to give, and from them, as from the strong hills, pours out an
inexhaustible potency of bracing influence.
At last Henry found himself back at the top-end of his street. He had
walked the Strand with deliberate enjoyment. Fleet Street he still
reserved, but, as according to the tower of Clement Danes it was only
just ten o'clock, it seemed still a little early to attack his business.
A florist's close by suggested a charming commonplace way of filling the
time. He would buy some flowers and carry them to Goldsmith's grave. Why
Goldsmith's grave should thus be specially honoured, he a little
wondered. He was conscious of loving several writers quite as well. But
it was a Johnsonian tradition to love Goldy, and the accessibility of
his resting-place made sentiment easy.
He repented this momentary flippancy of thought as he stood in the
cloistered corner where Goldsmith sleeps under the eye of the law; and,
when he laid his little wreath on the worn stone, it was a genuine
offering. From it he turned away to his own personal dreams.
By eleven he had found his friend the publisher, in a dainty little
place of business crammed with pottery, Rowlandsons, and books, and
more like a curiosity-shop than a publishing-house, for the publisher
proved an enthusiast in everything that was beautiful or curious, and
had indeed taken to publishing from that rare motive in a
publisher,--the love of books, rather than the love of money. He was
aiming to make his little shop the rallying-point of all the young
talent of the day, and as young talent has never too many publishers on
the look-out for it, his task was not difficult, though it was one of
those real services to literature which such publishers and booksellers
have occasionally done in our literary history, with but scant
acknowledgment.
Henry was pleased to find that he looked upon him to make one of his
little band of youth; and as the publisher understood the art of
encouragement, Henry already felt it had been worth while to come to
London just to see him. He knew the editor to whom Henry had a letter
and volunteered him another. The afternoon would be the best time;
meanwhile, they must lunch together. He smiled when Henry suggested the
Cheshire Cheese. Henry had a sort of vague idea that literary men could
hardly think of taking their meals anywhere else. There had been an
attempt to bring it into fashion again, the publisher said; but it had
come to nothing--though he, for one, loved those old chop-houses, with
their tankards, and their sanded floors. So to the Cheshire Cheese they
repaired, and drank to a long friendship in foaming pewters of porter.
"Alas!" said Henry, "we are fallen on smaller times. Once it was 'the
poet's pint of port.' Now we must be content with the poetaster's
half-a-pint of porter!"
"You must come to my rooms to-night," said the publisher, "and be
introduced to some of our young men. I have one or two of our older
critics coming too."
Henry's fortune was evidently made.
He found the editor in a dim back room at the top of a high building, so
lost in a world of books and dust that at first Henry could hardly make
him out, writing by a window with his back to the door. Then an alert
head turned round to him, and a rather peevish gesture bade him be
seated, while the editor resumed his work. This hardly came up to
Henry's magnificent dreams of the editorial dignity. Perhaps he had a
vague idea that editors lived in palaces, and sat on thrones.
Presently the editor put down his pen with an exclamation of
satisfaction; and the first impression of peevishness vanished in the
cordiality with which he now turned to his visitor.
"You must excuse my absorption. It was a rather tough piece of
proof-reading. A subject I'm rather interested in,--new Welsh
dictionary. Don't suppose it's in your line, eh, eh?"--and the tall,
spare man laughed a boyish laugh like a mischievous bird, and tossed his
head at the jest.
His face was small and sallow and tired; but the dark eyes were full of
fun and kindness. Presently, he rose and began to walk up and down the
room with a curious, prancing walk, rolling himself a cigarette, and
talking away in a rapid, jerky fashion with his continual, "eh, eh?"
coming in all the time.
"Poor Gerard! So you know him? How is he now?" and he lowered his voice
with the suggestion of a mutual confidence, and stopped in his walk till
Henry should answer. "Poor Gerard! And he might have been--well,
well,--never mind. We were together at King's. Brilliant fellow. So you
know Gerard. Dear me! Dear me!"
Then he turned to the subject of Henry's visit.
"Well, my poor boy, nothing will satisfy you but literature? You are
determined to be a literary man, eh, eh?" Then he stopped in front of
Henry and laid his hand kindly on his shoulder, "Is it too late to say,
'Go back while there is yet time'? Perhaps--of course--you're going to
be a very great man," and he broke off into his walk again, with one of
his mischievous laughs. "But unless you are, take my word, it's a poor
game--Yet, I suppose, it's no use talking. I know, wasted breath, wasted
breath--Well, now, what can you do? and, by the way, you won't grow fat
on _The Fleet Street Review_. Ten shillings a column is our magnificent
rate of payment, and we can hardly afford that--"
Then he began pulling out one book and another from the piles of all
sorts that lay around him. "I suppose, like the rest, you'd better begin
on poetry. There's a tableful over there--go and take your pick of it,
unless, of course, you've got some special subject. You're not, I
suppose, an authority on Assyriology, eh, eh?"
Henry feared not, and then a new fit of industry came upon the editor,
and he begged Henry to take a look at the books while he ran through
another proof for the post.
That dusty table--evidently the rubbish-heap of the room--was Henry's
first object-lesson in the half tragical, half farcical, over-production
of modern literature. Such a mass of foolishness and ineptitude he had
never conceived of; such pretentiousness too--and while he made various
melancholy reflections upon human vanity, what should he unearth
suddenly from the heap, but his own little volume. He could but half
suppress a cry of recognition.
"What's that?" asked the editor, not turning round. "Found anything?"
"No," said Henry; "nothing--for a moment I thought I had."
Presently he had made a small pile of the most promising volumes, and
turned to take his leave. The editor took up one or two of them
carelessly.
"Not much here, I'm afraid," he said. "Never mind; see what you can make
of them. Not more than three columns at the most, you know. And come and
see me again. I'm glad to have seen you."
"Oh," said Henry, on the point of leaving, and laying his hand on his
own little book, "may I take this one too? It's not worth reviewing, but
it rather interested me just now."
"God bless me, yes, certainly," said the editor; "you're welcome to the
lot, if you care to bring a hand-cart. Good-bye, good-bye."
And Henry slipped his poor little neglected volume into his pocket. On
how many dusty tables, he wondered, was it then lying ignominiously
disregarded. Well, the day would come! Meanwhile, he had his first batch
of books for review.