‘Generous fellow-citizen of the future republic of the world! How many
times have you and your distinguished friend Louis Blanc assisted me,
and again I am writing to you and to _citoyen_ Blanc to beg for a few
shillings. My heart-rending position has not changed for the better,
far from my Lares and Penates, on the inhospitable island of egoism
and greed. With what profound truth have you said in your works (I am
continually re-reading them), “The talent dies out without money like a
lamp without oil”——’ and so on.
I need hardly say that I never did write such bosh, and my fellow-citizen
of the _république future et universelle_ had never once opened my works.
After the orators by letter come the orators by word of mouth who ‘work
the pavement and the street corner.’ For the most part they only pretend
to be exiles, but are in reality foreign workmen who have sunk from
drink or men who have had _misfortunes_ at home. Taking advantage of the
immense size of London, they work thoroughly through one quarter after
another and then return to the Via Sacra—that is to Regent Street, with
the Haymarket and Leicester Square.
Five years ago a young man rather neatly dressed and of a sentimental
appearance approached me on several occasions in the dusk with a
question in French spoken with a German accent: ‘Could you tell me where
such-and-such a part is?’ and he handed me an address half a dozen miles
from the West End, somewhere in Holloway or Hackney. Everybody tried,
as I did, to explain where it was. He was overwhelmed with horror. ‘It
is nine o’clock in the evening already. I have had nothing to eat yet
... when shall I get there?... Not a penny for an omnibus.... I did not
expect this. I do not like to ask you, but if you could lend me ... one
shilling would be enough....’
I met him twice more. At last he disappeared, and not without
satisfaction I came upon him some months later in his old pitch with a
different beard and wearing a different cap. Raising the latter with
feeling, he asked me: ‘No doubt you know French?’ ‘I do,’ I answered,
‘but I know also that you have an address, that you have to go a long
distance, that the hour is late, that you have had nothing to eat, that
you have no money for an omnibus and that you need a shilling ... but
this time I will give you sixpence because I have told you all that
instead of your telling me.’
‘I can’t help it,’ he answered, smiling, without the slightest
resentment, ‘of course you won’t believe me again, but I am going to
America. You might add something for my fare.’