CHAPTER VIII.

IMPECUNIOSITY OF AUTHORS.

That memory of William Makepeace Thackeray upon which I care least to

dwell is the low estimate he had of men of genius in his own profession.

It may be that this was with him, as it was with Doctor Johnson, a species

of mock modesty; but it is none the less unpleasant for one to remember

who so enthusiastically admires his great works. Men of letters have never

lacked more than enough to slander them and magnify their peccadilloes, to

sneer at their pride, and lower their social status, without finding such

enemies in their own camp. You may remember how, in his lectures on the

English humourists of the last century, Thackeray denied that there was

any lack of goodwill and kindness towards men of genius in this country,

or that they often failed to meet with generous and helping hands in the

time of their necessity. Ignoring all but men of one class (whose follies

and vices were after all those of their age), and painting these in his

darkest colours and most repulsive forms, he asked,--

"What claim had one of these of whom I have been speaking but genius?

What return of gratitude, fame, affection, did it not bring to all?

What punishment befell those who were unfortunate among them but that

which follows reckless habits and careless lives? For these faults a

wit must suffer like the dullest prodigal that ever ran in debt. He

must pay the tailor if he wears the coat; his children must go in rags

if he spends his money at the tavern; he can't come to London and be

made Lord Chancellor if he stops on the road and gambles away his last

shilling at Dublin, and he must pay the social penalty of these

follies, too, and expect that the world will shun the man of bad

habits; that women will avoid the man of loose life; that prudent

folks will close their doors as a precaution, and before a demand

should be made on their pockets by the needy prodigal."

There is no gainsaying all this, it is so highly respectable, and I would

endorse its application as heartily as those did who once so loudly

applauded it, if (and there is, you know, _much_ virtue in an "if") the

discouragement spoken of had really been awarded to the vices and follies

and not to the genius; whereas it must be patent to all who have studied

the social life of the last century, as Thackeray did, that the direct

reverse of this was the case--that such bad habits and such loose lives

were absolutely the chief conditions upon which the wits of society were

patronised and encouraged. Therefore a degree of hardness and cruelty in

the rigid and virtuous superiority of this great writer, who, happily,

born in a more refined and purer time, so magnifies the vices of the

unfortunate dead, in order to lessen the pity and respect which their

greatness won for them. It is this which I do not like to associate with

the memory of our great novelist.

Poor, half-starved Robert Burns, chained to the oar of impecuniosity,

toiling like a galley-slave, as he said, for the means of supporting his

parents and seizing every spare moment for such intellectual improvement

as was within his reach, had written most of his finest works before the

patronage of the great introduced him to their bacchanalian revels, and

carried him as a wonder, and an extraordinary novelty (a peasant poet),

into the very best Edinburgh society for a season; during which, by dining

out with the noble and great, he ran a serious risk of dying at home

through starvation.

It can hardly be said that eighteenth-century patronage and appreciation

did much for him, or for us. It won him perhaps the dangerous and trying

occupation of exciseman, at a salary of L70 a year: it matured, if it did

not absolutely create, the bad habits which plunged him into pecuniary

cares and difficulties, weakened his intellectual stamina, and destroyed

his self-respect. He was witty, eloquent, amusing, a genius, and a wonder;

but when he ceased to be a novelty, the idol of society was ruthlessly

cast aside, to live or die, any how he could, and we find him copying

music to procure food for himself and those dear to him. Dissipation and

trouble carried him off in the prime of his manhood, and the full maturity

of his genius, when without such patronage as Thackeray believed in,

seemingly, he might have achieved triumphs loftier than those in the full

pride of which every patriot has a share.

An extract from a letter written by Burns to Thomson on the 19th of July,

1796, says:

"After all my boasted independence, cursed necessity compels me to

implore you for five pounds. A cruel scoundrel of a haberdasher, to

whom I owe an account, taking it into his head that I am dying, has

commenced a process and will infallibly put me in jail. Do for God's

sake send me that sum, and by return of post. Forgive me this

earnestness; but the horrors of a jail have made me half disheartened;

I do not ask all this gratuitously; for upon returning health I

promise, and engage to furnish you with five pounds' worth of the

neatest song-genius you have seen."

Robert Bloomfield did not find those generous and helpful friends of

genius whom the imagination of Thackeray created to people the eighteenth

century. He, like Burns, was a farmer's boy, who afterward became a

shoemaker's errand-boy, living in a garret at 7, Fisher's Court, Coleman

Street, in which he and four others, one being his brother, worked, and

slept on "turn-up" beds. There he fetched the dinners from the cookshop,

did the inferior part of the work, and ran errands; taught himself to read

by the aid of borrowed newspapers and a little dictionary, bought for him

at a second-hand stall, for fourpence, by one of his fellow-workers, and

by listening to an eloquent dissenting minister named Fawcett, acquired

the proper pronunciation of words. He began verse-writing at sixteen, and

at that age also began to instruct his brother and his partners in the

Fisher's Court garret (for which they paid five shillings a week), and in

another "parlour next the sky" in Blue Hart Court, Bell Alley, where a

fellow-lodger made him inexpressibly happy by the loan of Milton's

'Paradise Lost' and Thomson's 'Seasons.' When he fell in love with a young

woman named Church, daughter of a boat-builder in the Government Yard at

Woolwich, he sold his most precious possession (to purchase which he had

practised much self-denial), his fiddle, on which he had taught himself to

play. Writing to his brother, he said, "I have sold my fiddle and got a

wife."

His brother says, "Like most poor men, he got a wife first, and had to get

household stuff afterwards." It took him some years to get out of ready

furnished lodgings. At length, by hard working, etc., he acquired a bed of

his own, and hired the room up one pair of stairs at 14, Bell Alley,

Coleman Street; and there, as he worked unaided by costly writing

materials, amongst the noise and bustle of seven other workmen who,

conjointly with himself, had hired a garret in the same house as their

work-room, he composed his famous poem 'The Farmer's Boy,' the latter

portion of his 'Autumn,' and the whole of his 'Winter.' Not a line of

either was committed to paper before each was corrected, altered,

improved, and finally completed.

The poet Crabbe was another eighteenth-century genius who failed to find

the generous, ever-ready patronage and friendship, whereof Thackeray said,

"It would hardly be grateful to alter my old opinion that we (men of

letters) do meet with good will and kindness, with generous and helping

hands, in the time of our necessity; with cordial and friendly

recognition." Having failed in his medical practice at Aldborough, in

Suffolk, where, in 1789 he was born, Crabbe borrowed five pounds, and with

that sum came to London. Taking lodgings near the Exchange, he began his

literary career full of hope and vigour. But the booksellers, Dodsley and

Becket, civilly declined his productions; and when he published some poems

cheaply at his own expense his publisher failed; and the poor poet's

little, carefully husbanded money being exhausted, he applied to Lord

North for assistance,--in vain. Then he addressed verses to Lord

Chancellor Thurlow, who said in reply, "his avocations did not leave him

leisure to read verse." For a time he lived by selling his clothes, and

pawning his watch and surgical instruments; then his books were

reluctantly sold, and then debt came, and he was threatened with

imprisonment. In the midst of these anxious cares, fears, and sufferings,

with starvation staring him in the face, he bade the muse a sorrowful

adieu, and sought work as a druggist's assistant. He had but eightpence in

the world when he wrote to Edmund Burke, and himself left the letter at

that eminent statesman's house in Charles Street. Begging letters from

starving poets and literary men were familiar enough in those days, and

Burke received more than his fair share of them. Crabbe has himself told

us how, weary, penniless, and hungry, being afraid to go back to his

lodging, he traversed Westminster Bridge all throughout the night

following the delivery of that letter until daybreak. The letter itself, a

memorable curiosity of impecuniosity, I here append:

"_To Edmund Burke, Esq._

"SIR,--I am sensible that I need even your talents to apologize for

the freedom I now take, but I have a plea which, however simply urged,

will with a mind like yours, sir, procure me pardon. I am one of those

outcasts on the world who are without a friend, without employment,

without bread.

"Pardon me a short preface. I had a partial father who gave me a

better education than his broken fortune would have allowed, and a

better than was necessary, as he could give me that only. I was

designed for the profession of Physic; but not having the wherewithal

to complete the necessary studies, the design but served to convince

me of a parent's affection and the error it had occasioned. In April

last I came to London with three pounds, and flattered myself this

would be sufficient to supply me with the common necessaries of life

till my abilities should procure me more; of these I had the highest

opinion, and a poetical vanity contributed to my delusion. I knew

little of the world and had read books only. I wrote, and fancied

perfection in my compositions; when I wanted bread they promised me

affluence and soothed me with dreams of reputation, whilst my

appearance subjected me to contempt. In time reflection and want have

shown me my mistake. I see my trifles in that which I think the true

light, and whilst I deem them such have yet the opinion that holds

them superior to the common run of poetical publications.

"I had some knowledge of the late Mr. Nassau, the brother of Lord

Rochford; in consequence of which I asked his lordship's permission to

inscribe my little work to him, knowing it to be free from all

political allusions and personal abuse. It was no material point to me

to whom it was dedicated, his lordship thought it none to him, and

obligingly consented to my request.

"I was told a subscription would be the more profitable method for me,

and therefore endeavoured to circulate copies of the enclosed

proposals.

"I am afraid, sir, I disgust you with this very drill narration, but

believe me punished in the misery that occasions it. You will conclude

that during this time I must have been at more expense than I could

afford--indeed, the most parsimonious could not have avoided it. The

printer deceived me, and my little business has had every delay. The

people with whom I live perceive my situation and find me to be

indigent and without friends. About ten days since I was compelled to

give a note for seven pounds to avoid an arrest for about double that

sum which I owe. I wrote to every friend I had, but my friends are

poor likewise; the time of payment approached, and I ventured to

represent my case to Lord Rochford. I begged to be credited for this

sum till I received it of my subscribers, which I believe will be

within one month: but to this letter I had no reply, and I have

probably offended by my importunity. Having used every honest means in

vain, I yesterday confessed my inability, and obtained with much

entreaty and as the greatest favour a week's forbearance, when I am

positively told that I must pay the money or prepare for a prison.

"You will guess the purpose of so long an introduction. I appeal to

you, sir, as a good, and let me add, a great man. I have no other

pretensions to your favour than that I am an unhappy one. It is not

easy to support the thought of confinement, and I am coward enough to

dread such an end to my suspense.

"Can you, sir, in any degree aid me with propriety?

"Will you ask any demonstration of my veracity?

"I have imposed upon myself, but I have been guilty of no other

imposition. Let me, if possible, interest your compassion. I know

those of rank and fashion are teased with frequent petitions, and are

compelled to refuse the requests even of those whom they know to be in

distress; it is therefore with a distant hope I ventured to solicit

such favour, but you will forgive me, sir, if you do not think proper

to relieve. It is impossible that sentiments like yours can proceed

from any but a humane and generous heart.

"I will call upon you, sir, to-morrow, and if I have not the happiness

to obtain credit with you I must submit to my fate. My existence is a

pain to myself, and every one near and dear to me are distressed in my

distress. My connections, once the source of happiness, embitter the

reverse of my fortune, and I have only to hope a speedy end to a life

so unpromisingly begun, in which (though it ought not to be boasted

of) I can reap some consolation from looking to the end of it.

"I am, sir, with the greatest respect,

"Your obedient and most humble servant,

"GEORGE CRABBE."

Burke replied immediately, appointing an interview, from which dated the

change in Crabbe's fortune. Money was given to him, apartments provided

for him at Beaconsfield, where he was treated as if he belonged to the

generous statesman's own family,--the very publisher who had refused his

poems was ready enough to publish them when Edmund Burke suggested his

doing so, and even Lord Thurlow gave him a hundred-pound note. Through his

patron's influence the surgeon afterwards became a clergyman and chaplain

to the Duke of Rutland. In 1807 the copyright of Crabbe's poems was sold

for three thousand pounds.

Another article in Thackeray's belief was, that "without necessity," as he

said in _Fraser's Magazine_ (1846), "men of genius would not work at all,

or very little. It does not follow," said he, "that a man would produce a

great work even if he had leisure. Squire Shakespeare of Stratford-on-Avon

with his land, and his rents, and his arms over the porch, was not the

working Shakespeare; and indolence, or contemplation if you like, is no

unusual quality in literary men."

The reader will find, in my chapter on the "Impecuniosity of Artists," a

curious contrast to this opinion in that expressed by Ruskin, in his

'Political Economy of Art.' Our great art critic draws a touching picture

of the man of genius, toiling painfully through his early years of

obscurity and neglect, yearning vainly for the peace and time requisite

for producing great works. And Sir Bulwer Lytton, writing pathetically of

poor Leman Blanchard, whom Thackeray knew personally, said,--

"Few men had experienced more to sour them, or had gone through the

author's hardening ordeal of narrow circumstances, of daily labour,

and of that disappointment in the higher aims of ambition, which must

almost inevitably befall those who retain ideal standards of

excellence _to be reached but by time and leisure_, and who are yet

compelled to draw hourly upon immatured resources for the practical

wants of life."

Blanchard's father was a painter and glazier in Southwark, who doubtless

practised no little self-denial to give his son a good education, which

could not but, as Sir Bulwer Lytton said, with a faint tinge of an

old-world prejudice in his words, "unfit young Leman for the calling of

his father;" "for it developed the abilities and bestowed the learning

which may be said to lift a youth morally out of trade, and to refine him

at once into a gentleman." He began life at the desk as a clerk in the

office of Mr. Charles Pearson, a proctor in Doctors' Commons, and soon

began to contribute some promising characteristic sketches to a

publication called _The Drama_. As a clerk, he was not satisfactory nor

satisfied; and his father was about to take him from it, and teach him his

own trade, to avoid which Blanchard tried through the influence of the

actor, Mr. Henry Johnston, to find an opening on the stage. The histrionic

friend, however, painted the miseries and uncertainties of his profession

in such gloomy and terrible colours, that the poor boy's heart sank within

him, and he had turned with despair to obscurity and trade when the

manager of the Margate Theatre offered him an engagement, which he

accepted. "A week," says Mr. Buckstone, who was then on intimate terms

with him, "was sufficient to disgust him with the beggary and drudgery of

the country player's life, and as there was no 'Harlequin' steaming it

from Margate to London Bridge at that day, he performed his journey back

on foot, having on reaching Rochester but his last shilling--the poet's

veritable last shilling--in his pocket."

Buckstone also wrote:

"At that time a circumstance occurred which my poor friend's fate has

naturally brought to my recollection. He came to me late one evening

in a state of great excitement, informed me that his father had turned

him out of doors, that he was utterly hopeless and wretched, and was

resolved to destroy himself. I used my best endeavours to console him,

to lead his thoughts to the future, and hope in what chance and

perseverance might effect for him. Our discourse took a livelier turn,

and after making up a bed on a sofa in my own room I retired to rest.

I soon slept soundly, but was awakened by hearing a footstep

descending the stairs. I looked towards the sofa and discovered he had

left it. I heard the street-door close. I instantly hurried on my

clothes and followed him. I called to him, but received no answer. I

ran till I saw him in the distance, also running. I again called his

name, I implored him to stop, but he would not answer me. Still

continuing his pace, I became alarmed, and doubled my speed. I came up

to him near Westminster Bridge; he was hurrying to the steps leading

to the river. I seized him, he threatened to strike me if I did not

release him. I called for the watch, I entreated him to return; he

became more pacified, but still seemed anxious to escape from me. By

entreaties, by every means of persuasion I could think of, by threats

to call for help, I succeeded in taking him back."

After that desperate attempt, Blanchard obtained work as a printer's

reader with Messrs. Bayliss, of Fleet Street.

Thackeray summed up his poor friend's condition at this time thus briefly:

"The young fellow, forced to the proctor's desk, quite angry with the

drudgery, theatre-stricken, poetry-stricken, writing dramatic sketches

in Barry Cornwall's manner, spouting 'Leonidas' before a manager,

driven away starving from home, penniless and full of romance,

courting his beautiful young wife.... Then there comes that pathetic

little outbreak of despair, when the poor young fellow is nearly

giving up, his father banishes him, no one will buy his poetry, he has

no chance on his darling theatre, no chance of the wife that he is

longing for. Why not finish life at once? He has read 'Werter,' and

can understand suicide. 'None,' he says in a sonnet,

'None, not the hoariest sage, may tell of all

The strong heart struggles, wills, before it fall.'

If respectability wanted to point a moral, isn't there one here?

Eschew poetry--avoid the theatre--stick to your business--do not read

German novels--do not marry at twenty: and yet the young poet marries

at twenty in the teeth of poverty and experience, labours away not

unsuccessfully, puts Pegasus into harness, rises in social rank and

public estimation, brings up happily an affectionate family, gets for

himself a circle of the warmest friends, and thus carries on for

twenty years, when a providential calamity visits him and the poor

wife almost together, and removes them both."

The "providential calamity" came in the beginning of 1844, when Mrs.

Blanchard, the most tenderly-loving of wives, and a devoted mother, was

attacked by paralysis, which affected the brain, and terminated in

madness, speedily followed by death. Partial paralysis seized her husband,

and in a burst of delirium, "having his little boy in bed by his side, and

having said the Lord's prayer but a short time before, he sprang out of

bed in the absence of his nurse (whom he had besought not to leave him),

and made away with himself with a razor.... At the very moment of his

death his friends were making the kindest and most generous exertions on

his behalf." Thackeray, whom I have quoted, adds: "Such a noble, loving,

and generous creature is never without such. The world, it is pleasant to

think, is always a good and gentle world to the gentle and good, and

reflects the benevolence with which they regard it." This is comfortable

doctrine, and I would I were sure of its truthfulness. I wonder what poor

Gerald Griffin would have said of it in the year 1825, when he was

residing at 15, Paddington Street, Regent's Park, London, and, writing to

his mother in Ireland, said:

"Until within a short time back I have not had, since I left Ireland,

a single moment's peace of mind; constantly running backwards and

forwards, and trying a thousand expedients, only to meet

disappointments everywhere I turned.... I never will think or talk

upon the subject again. It was such a year that I did not think it

possible I could have outlived, and the very recollection of it puts

me into the horrors.... When I first came to London my own

self-conceit, backed by the opinion of one of the most original

geniuses of the age, induced me to set about revolutionising the

dramatic taste of the time by writing for the stage. Indeed, the

design was formed and the first step taken (a couple of pieces

written) in Ireland. I cannot with my present experience conceive

anything more comical than my own views and measures at that time. A

young gentleman totally unknown even to a single family in London

coming into town with a few pounds in one pocket, and a brace of

tragedies in the other, supposing that the one will set him up before

the others are exhausted, is not a very novel, but a very laughable

delusion. I would weary you, or I would carry you through a number of

curious scenes into which it led me. Only imagine the model young

Munsterman spouting his tragedy to a roomful of literary ladies and

gentlemen; some of high consideration. The applause, however, of that

circle on that night was sweeter, far sweeter, to me then than would

be the bravos of a whole theatre at present, being united at the time

to the confident anticipation of it."

The result was his introduction to a manager--all the actors were eager to

introduce him to their managers, and to one he went.

"He," continues poor Griffin, "let down the pegs that made my

music.... He was very polite, talked, and chatted about himself, and

Shiel, and my excellent friend Banim. He kept my play four months,

wrote me some nonsensical apologies about keeping it so long, and cut

off to Ireland, leaving orders to have it sent to my lodgings without

any opinion. I was quite surprised at this, and the more so that

Banim, who is one of the most successful dramatic writers, at the same

time saying, what indeed I found every person who had the least

theatric knowledge join in, that I acted most unwisely in putting a

play into an actor's hands. It was then that I set about writing for

those weekly publications, all of which, except the _Literary

Gazette_, cheated me most abominably. Then finding this to be the

case, I wrote for the great magazines. My articles were generally

inserted, but on calling for payment, seeing that I was but a poor

inexperienced devil, there was so much shuffling and shabby work, that

it disgusted me, and I gave up the idea of making money that way. I

now lost heart for everything, got into the cheapest lodging I could

make out, and there worked on, rather to divert my mind from the

horrible gloom that I felt growing on me, in spite of myself, than

with any hope of being remunerated. This, and the recollection of the

expense I had put William to, and the fears that every moment became

conviction that I should never be able to fulfil his hopes, or my own

expectations, all came pressing together upon my mind and made me

miserable. A thousand and a thousand times I wished that I could lie

down quietly and die at once, and be forgotten for ever. I can

describe to you my state of mind at this time. It was not an indolent

despondency, for I was working hard as I am now, and it is only

receiving money for the labour of those dreadful hours. I used not to

see a face that I knew, and after sitting writing all day, when I

walked in the streets in the evening, it actually seemed to me as if I

was a different species altogether from the people about me. The fact

was, from pure anxiety alone, I was more than half dead, and would

most certainly have given up the ghost, I believe, were it not that by

the merest accident on earth the library friend (Mr. Forster), who had

procured me the unfortunate introduction a year before, dropped in one

evening to have a talk with me. I had not seen him, nor anybody else

that I knew, for some months, and he frightened me by saying I looked

like a ghost. In a few days, however, a publisher of his acquaintance

had got me some things to do, works to arrange, regulate, and revise,

so he asked me if I would devote a few hours in the middle of every

day to the purpose for L50 a year. I did so, and among other things

which I got to revise was a weekly fashionable journal."

In this letter to his mother he said nothing of being without the

commonest necessaries of life, of being ashamed to go out by daylight

because his clothes were so shabby, of passing entire days without

food--on one occasion no less than three.

There was in poor old Gerald Griffin no signs of that "indolence, or

contemplation if you like," which Thackeray considered "no unusual quality

in the literary man." With despair in his heart he still wrote on, simply

because the labour in which he had delight physicked the pains of

impecuniosity. But it was not under such conditions that even Griffin did

his best work.

Mr. R. P. Gillies, in his 'Memoirs of a Literary Veteran,' tells how, when

he was contemplating work of a higher and more ambitious character than he

had then attempted, "in consequence of domestic anxieties little or

nothing was accomplished." He merely built some grand literary castles in

the air (for which he was ridiculed in the 'Noctes Ambrosianae,' under the

name of "Kempferhausen"); but he says: "There were some awkward conditions

attached to the basis of my aerial structures; for example, I must have

unbroken tranquillity like that of an anchoret. There must be no shadow on

the mind of worldly cares and perturbation, otherwise the spells would be

broken." Bread was his incentive to work, but it was the hack work of

which Scott so bitterly complained, not the great work he yearned to

accomplish, and could not for want of "peace and time."

The above allusion is to Sir Walter in the zenith of his fame when,

through "long-winded" publishers' money being in immediate demand, he

contemplated abandoning original fiction for the more rapid work of

compilation. He wanted that to secure not only bread, but the peace and

time which in common with Ruskin he thought essential to the production of

great work; and he wrote in his diary, under the date December 18th, 1825:

"The general knowledge that an author must write for bread, at least for

improving his pittance, degrades him and his productions in the public

eye. He falls into the second rank of estimation,

"'When the harness sore galls, and the spurs his sides goad,

And the high-mettled racer's a hack on the road.'

It is a bitter thought, but, if tears start, let them flow."

Thackeray, despite his self-satisfying opinion about the world's being

always "so good and gentle" to the "gentle and good," here held Sir

Walter's opinion, for under the signature of Michael Angelo Titmarsh,

Esq., he wrote:

"Our calling is only sneered at because it is not well paid. The world

has no other criterion for respectability. In Heaven's name, what made

the people talk of setting up a statue to Sir William Follet? What had

he done? He had made thirty thousand pounds!... Directly the men of

letters get rich they will come in for their share of honour too; and

a future writer in this miscellany (Fraser's) may be getting his

guineas where we get one, and dining at Buckingham Palace while you

and your humble servant, dear Padre Francisco, are glad to smoke our

pipes over the sanded floor of the little D----."

Sir Walter Scott's opinion of writing under peaceful and under troublous

circumstances was also shown in the following entry, under the same date

as the above. It runs as follows:

"Poor T. S. called again yesterday. Through his incoherent miserable

tale I could see that he had exhausted each access to credit, and yet

fondly imagines that, bereft of all his accustomed indulgences, he can

work with a literary zeal unknown to his happier days. I hope he may

labour enough to gain the mere support of his family."

Poverty is not, however, always fatal to the highest efforts of genius,

even if it be not essential as an incentive to work; and there is often

found in "the labour we delight in" that which "physics pain" (as

Shakespeare said), even the pains of impecuniosity. Goldoni, speaking of

his dramatic writings and consequent poverty, says, "Though in any other

situation I might have been in easier circumstances, I should never have

been so happy;" and who can doubt the happiness of the illustrious Linnaeus

when he was wandering a-foot with his stylus, magnifying-glass and baskets

of plants, sharing the peasants' rustic meals and homely shelter, when he

gave his own name to the little Lapland flower now called the Linnaeus

Borealis, because it reminded him of his own position, being "a little

northern plant, flowering early, depressed, abject, and long overlooked"?

Rousseau, writing of his works and life, says:

"It was in a small garret in the new street of St. Etienne du Mont,

where I resided four years in the midst of physical suffering and

domestic trouble, that I enjoyed the most exquisite pleasure of my

life, that of writing and publishing my 'Studies of Nature.'"

The _Quarterly Review_ (vol. viii.), comparing the writer who goes to his

work in a spirit of love for it, and pride in it, with him who labours at

it merely for the money it produces, says: "The one is like a thirsty hart

that comes joyously to refresh itself at the water-brooks, and the other

to the same beast panting and jaded with the dogs of hunger and necessity

behind."

When Olivet presented his elaborate edition of Cicero to the public, he

said the glory and pleasure he had received in producing it were all he

required by way of remuneration; money he refused. Pieresc, one of the

most liberal and generous of men, although his fortune was a small one,

loved learning only for its own sweet sake, and was never so happy as he

was when shut up in his study amongst his books and MSS. "A literary man's

true wealth," said he, "consists in works of art, the treasures of a

library, and the affections of his fellow-students." Lord Wodehouse, when

re-writing his 'Lectures on History,' said: "The task rewarded him with

that peculiar delight which has often been observed in the latter years of

literary men, the delight of returning again to the studies of their youth

and of feeling under the snows of age the cheerful memories of their

spring." Petrarch, writing of himself to a friend, said, "I read, I write,

I think; such is my life and my pleasures as they were in my youth."

Beranger, when he was living on the fifth story in the Boulevard St.

Martin, "without money and with no certain prospect for the future," as he

himself said, had installed himself in his garret "with inexpressible

satisfaction" because, as he wrote, "To live alone and to compose verses

at my leisure appeared to me the very summit of felicity." Speaking in the

spirit of his "sky parlour," he said: "What a beautiful prospect I enjoyed

from its window! What delight I had to sit there in the evening hovering

as it were over the immense city, from which a loud, hoarse murmur

incessantly ascended, especially when there blended with it the noise and

tumult of some great storm." But there were two sides to this life, and

time revealed both. With peace and time, bread and cheese and dreams of

glory, the poet was content and happy, even when thin and pale; he grew

every day so weak that his father used to say frequently, "I shall soon

bury you." But he was not dismayed, but starved and wrote on placidly

enough until the fear of the conscription fell upon him. But even then, as

he tells us, Providence befriended him and out of evil brought good. He

says: "I was bald at twenty-three in consequence, as I suppose, of

continuous headaches. When the gendarmes came in search for conscripts I

removed my hat. They looked at my bald head and were satisfied. They went

away without me."

Again he writes in his fragmentary autobiography:

"Fortune at last suffered herself to be touched by my sorrows. Three

years had I been vainly seeking some humble form of employment, when,

urged by a terrible necessity in the beginning of 1804, I sent a

letter and verses to M. Lucien Bonaparte. My gold watch had been long

where I left it pledged at the Mont de Piete. My wardrobe had dwindled

to three old patched and often mended shirts, a threadbare overcoat

also carefully adorned with patches, with one pair of trousers with a

newly discovered hole in the knee, and a pair of boots which filled me

with despair whenever I cleaned them, they grew so rapidly worse. I

had posted to M. Bonaparte four or five hundred verses, and had told

no one that I had done so, so many applications had been fruitless."

One day, while sitting in his garret, needle in hand, eyeing lugubriously

the rent in his trousers, and thinking over some bitter misanthropical

verses which he was then writing, a letter was brought to him. It seemed a

letter of consequence--the handwriting was strange. Trembling with

excitement, he broke the seal. Joy! joy! joy! The Senator Bonaparte

desired to see him!

"It was not," he wrote, "my fortune that I first thought of, but Glory! My

eyes were full of tears, and I thanked God, whom in my moments of

prosperity I never forgot."

And yet of such men as these Thackeray wrote: "Bread is the main

incentive. Do not let us try to blink this fact or imagine that the men of

the press are working for their honour and glory or go onward impelled by

the inevitable afflatus of genius."

The elder Disraeli, who said, "Great authors sustain their own genius by a

sense of their own glory," when Dr. Johnson expressed views on this

subject according to some extent with Thackeray's, called them

"commercial, agricultural, and manufacturing views of human nature," and

complained that they lowered genius to the level of a machine, only to be

set in action by a force exterior to itself.

But doctors disagree, and opinions on every subject always differ. As

mentioned by me elsewhere, one of the first poets who tried to live by his

pen was Robert Greene, whose melancholy story is one of the most degrading

and painful passages in literary biography. He lived in the days of good

Queen Bess, and has left his own records of forlorn and miserable

experience. Isaac Disraeli calls him "the great patriarch and primeval

dealer in English literature, the most facetious, profligate, and

indefatigable of the Scribleri family." Quaint Anthony Wood, sneering at

him and his entire fraternity, as he often did, said, "He wrote to

maintain his wife and that high, loose course of living which poets

generally follow;" one accusation being about as true as the other, for so

far from maintaining his wife, he shamefully deserted both her and her

child, leaving her foodless; and the Elizabethan poets are said on the

whole to have been thrifty, god-fearing men, leading sober and steady

lives. Charles Knight wrote of him as one who was made desperate and

reckless by wrongs and neglect, but the pamphlet he wrote called 'The

Repentance of Robert Greene, Master of Arts,' taken with his other

confession, shows him to have been, as Mr. A. H. Wall said (in his 'Poets

and Players of Shakespeare's Time'), "an entirely bad and worthless

fellow, who disgusted his fellow-poets of the Bankside, and plunged into

such disgraceful excesses that he became shunned and contemned by them,

finding a welcome nowhere but in the lowest haunts of vice and

profligacy." This was the man who fell foul of his fellow-players and the

player-poets, calling them "apes," "rude grooms," "buckram gentlemen," and

"painted monsters," who attacked young Shakespeare when he was dressing

up, improving, and re-writing old plays, "as an upstart crow, beautified

with our feathers," and aroused our great bard's many friends to anger and

indignation by saying he had "a tiger's heart wrapped in a player's hide,

and was a bad actor, conceited enough to suppose himself as well able to

bombast out a blank verse as the best, one who was vain enough to imagine

himself an absolute Johannes Factotum, the only Shakespeare in the

country:" accusations which even Henry Cheetle, who was concerned in their

publication, afterwards denounced as slanderous and spiteful, saying, "I

am as sorry as if the original fault had been my fault, because myself

hath seen his (Shakespeare's) demeanour no less civil than he is excellent

in the quality he professes, besides divers of worship have reported his

uprightness of dealing, which argues his honesty, and his facetious grace

in writing that approves his art."

Greene spent his time now in debauchery and drunkenness, now homeless,

penniless, and starving, one extreme following the other with fearful

frequency and rapidity. A contemporary poet, Gabriel Harvey, wrote of him

as follows:

"Who in London hath not heard of his (Greene's) dissolute and

licentious living, his fond disguisinge of a Master of Arts with

ruffianly hair, unseemly apparel, and more unseemly company, of his

vaine glorious and Thrasonicall brassinge; his piperly extemporising

and Tarletonizing; his apeish counterfeiting of every ridiculous and

absurd toy ... hys villainous cogging and foisting, his monstrous

swearinge and horrible forswearing, his impious profaning of sacred

textes; his other scandalous and blasphemous ravinge: his riotous and

outrageous surfeitinge: his continual shifting of lodgings; his

plausable musteringe and banquettynge of roysterly acquaintance at his

first comminge; his beggarly departing in every hostesses debt; his

infamous resorting to the Banckside, Shoreditch, Southwarke, and other

filthy haunts; his obscure lurkinge in basest corners; his pawning of

his sword, cloake, and what not, when money came short?" etc.

a catalogue of monstrous crimes, vices, and follies (which fills page

after page) fully borne out by Greene's own confessions.

He wrote of himself,

"In prime of youth a rose, in age a weed,

That for a minute's joy payes endless meed."

His last letter to the poor Lincolnshire lady whom he married, ill-used,

and cruelly abandoned, was dated from a squalid lodging in Dowgate, where

he died of want and disease. It ran as follows:

"Doll, I charge thee by the love of our youth and by my soules rest

that thou wilt see this man (the shoemaker) paide; for if hee and his

wife had not succoured me I had died in the streetes.

"ROBERT GREENE."

Doll was the amiable and worthy woman to whom he had previously written:

"The remembrance of many wrongs offered thee and thy unreproved

virtues add greater sorrow to my miserable state than I can utter or

thou conceive, neither is it lessened by consideration of thy absence

(though shame would hardly let me behold thy face) but exceedingly

aggravated."

Akin in character to Greene was John Skelton, a popular poet in the reign

of the seventh Henry, and King Henry the Eighth's poet laureate, who wrote

of himself:

"A King to me mine habit gave

At Oxford the University,

Advanced I was to that degree:

By whole consent of their Senate,

I was made Poet Laureate."

The title being then a university degree, and the habit a robe of white

and green, embroidered in silk and gold. He took holy orders in 1498, and,

as old Anthony Wood said, "having been guilty of many crimes, as most

poets are," Bishop Wykke suspended him from his benefice. In 1501 he was

in prison for marrying and keeping a mistress, "a crime amongst the clergy

of the Romish persuasion both in those days and these," says Cibber, "more

subjected to punishment than adultery." He was a fierce and bitter

assailant of the clergy, the Dominicans, and Cardinal Wolsey. Many of his

productions were never printed, but were chanted at markets and fairs, in

village ale-houses, and in the streets by itinerant ballad-singers, who

learned them by heart and sent them abroad like floating seeds borne

hither and thither by the vagrant winds. The author of the 'Lives of the

Laureates' said of this poet: "The brief glance we have of him, the

scholar and the buffoon, a priest with his married concubine and

bastardized children, mocking, half in anger half in jest, or it might be

in the wantonness of sorrow, at the falsehoods by which he was surrounded,

may justly awaken our sympathy nor fail to suggest a moral."

The misfortunes of poor Spenser I have referred to in dealing with the sad

side of the subject, but another of the laureates who tasted the full

bitterness of poverty was Ben Jonson, who began life as a bricklayer,

became a soldier, and a brave one too, abandoned arms to tread the stage,

and strolled about the country, trudging beside the waggon containing the

players' scenes, and "properties," many a weary mile. From acting plays he

took to writing plays, the two arts being then more intimately and nobly

associated than they ever have been since, for the stage has fallen out of

the hands of poets and players into those of showmen and buffoons. He was

married and had a son, to whom some of the players stood sponsors.

Shakespeare, it is traditionally said, was one of them, and what his

necessities were may be readily guessed from the entry in Henslowe's diary

preserved at Dulwich College, in which small sums are entered as advanced

to Ben Jonson for work he was then doing. A story is related of how he

came, after many other vain efforts, to the Globe Theatre on the Bankside

with his play of _Every Man in His Humour_, which after the manager had

superficially glanced at he coldly returned as unsuitable. Shakespeare, it

is said, stood by, and noting, we presume, the melancholy and despairing

way in which his future dear friend and rival turned to leave the theatre,

spoke to him, begging leave to read his play, with which he was so well

pleased that he brought about its acceptance. Poverty haunted Ben with

more or less closeness all through his career (often it must be confessed

through the extravagance of his hospitality to brother poets) and was, it

is said, sadly too intimate with him when he died. When sick in 1629,

Charles I., who had been generous to him, being supplicated in his favour,

sent him ten guineas, of which mean gift Smollett says, Jonson spoke as

follows to the messenger of whom he received it:

"His Majesty has sent me ten guineas because I am poor and live in an

alley. Go and tell him his soul lives in an alley."

Jonson died on the 6th August, 1637, having long outlived his wife and all

his children.

It is curious still to note how many of our literary lions began to make

their way in the world, as Jonson did, on the stage. It was so with

William Leman Rede, who, starting as an actor at Margate (the Margate

boards formed indeed the porch through which a very large number of

histrionic aspirants entered the theatrical profession), became an

itinerant actor, at one time playing Hamlet in a barn and at another Rover

on a billiard-table; sometimes foodless and hungry, travelling on foot and

sometimes luxuriating in a waggon, but always light-hearted and gay. Once

when he was laughing merrily at the plight he was in on a "treasury day,"

when, in the phraseology of the profession, "the ghost didn't walk," that

is to say when there was no money in hand to pay the actors' salaries,

some one asked how he continued to be jolly under such miserably

depressing circumstances. He replied, "I drink spring water and dance."

Rede was always a sober, abstemious man. Coming to London in 1825, he

published his first novel, 'The Wedded Wanderer,' which was followed by a

second, 'The White Tower,' each in three volumes. This was followed by

his 'Crimes and Criminals in Yorkshire,' and his connection with a weekly

publication belonging to his brother Thomas, called _Oxberry's Dramatic

Biography_--Thomas having married the widow of Oxberry the comedian, by

whom the serial had been started.

As actor, magazine writer, dramatist, journalist and novelist Rede

acquired fame but not wealth. One evening he was arrested for debt while

acting on the stage, by a sheriff's officer, who sprang from the pit over

the orchestra and footlights to secure his prisoner. Rede originated the

Dramatic Authors' Society.

Sheridan, to whom I have previously alluded, was another famous literary

man familiar with the boards and--need I say?--with impecuniosity. He was,

according to Haydon, "in debt all round to milkman, grocer, baker, and

butcher. Sometimes his wife would be kept waiting for an hour or more

while the servants were beating up the neighbourhood for coffee, butter,

eggs and rolls. While Sheridan was Paymaster of the Navy, a butcher one

day brought a leg of mutton; the cook took it and clapped it in the pot to

boil and went upstairs for the money, but the cook not returning, the

butcher removed the pot-lid, took out the mutton, and walked away with

it." On another occasion Michael Kelly, the musical celebrity, was

complaining to him of a wine merchant at Hochheim who instead of six dozen

of wine had sent him sixteen. Sheridan said he would take some off his

hands if he were not quite able to pay for it, but, said he, "you can get

rid of it easily, put up a sign over your door and write on it, 'Michael

Kelly, Composer of Wines and Importer of Music;'" a sly rub which the

composer received with a laugh, wittily retorting that there was one wine

so poisonous and intoxicating that he would neither compose nor import,

and that was "Old Sherry" (Sheridan's nickname).

One night when Sheridan was at home in a cottage he had about a mile from

Hounslow Heath, his son Tom asked him for some cash. "Money, I have none,"

was the reply.

"But let the consequences be what they may, money I must have," said Tom

fiercely.

"In that case, my dear Tom," said the father, "you will find a case of

loaded pistols upstairs and a horse ready saddled in the stable, the night

is dark and you are within half a mile of Hounslow Heath"--a place of

terrible repute for highway robbers.

"I understand," said Tom, "but I tried that before I came to you.

Unluckily the man I stopped was Peake, your treasurer, and he told me that

you had been beforehand with him and robbed him of every sixpence he had

in the world."

Kelly saw many instances of Sheridan raising money, but one instance in

particular astonished him. Sheridan was L3000 in arrear with the Italian

Opera performance; there were continual postponements, and at last the

singers resolved to strike. Kelly, as manager, received a note that on the

evening of a certain day they would not sing unless paid, and hurried off

to Morlands, the bankers in Pall Mall, for advances. The bankers were

inexorable; like the singers, they were worn out. The manager then flew

off to Sheridan at his residence in Hertford Street, Mayfair, where he was

kept waiting two hours. Sheridan was told that if he could not raise L3000

the theatre must be closed. "L3000, Kelly," he said; "there is no such sum

in nature. Are you an admirer of Shakespeare?"

"To be sure I am," said Kelly, "but what has Shakespeare to do with L3000

or the Italian singers?"

"There is one passage in Shakespeare," said Sherry, "which I have always

admired particularly, and it is where Falstaff says, 'Master Robert

Shallow, I owe you L1000.' 'Yes, Sir John,' says Shallow, 'which I beg you

will let me take home with me.' 'That may not so easily be, Master Robert

Shallow,' replies Falstaff. And so say I unto thee, Master Michael Kelly,

to get L3000 may not so easy be."

Kelly answered that there was no alternative then but to close the

theatre. Sheridan made Kelly ring the bell and have a Hackney coach

called, then sat down quite at his ease and read the newspaper. Kelly was

in an agony. The coach arrived, Sheridan requested Kelly to get into it,

and went with him. The coach was driven to Morlands' banking-house--Kelly

remained in the coach bewildered. In a quarter of an hour Sherry came out

of the bank with the required sum in bank notes. Kelly never knew how it

was obtained. Sherry told Kelly to take the money to the theatre, but to

save enough out of it for a barrel of oysters, which he, Sheridan, would

partake of that night at Kelly's lodgings in Suffolk Street.

On another occasion Kelly and Sheridan were one day in conversation close

to the gate of the path which was then open to the public, leading across

the churchyard of St. Paul's, Covent Garden, from King Street to Henrietta

Street. Holloway, a creditor of Sherry's, went by on horseback. He spoke

to Sherry in loud and angry tones, complaining that he could never get

admittance at Sheridan's house, and vowed vengeance on Francois, Sherry's

valet, if he did not let him in next time he called in Hertford Street.

Holloway was in a passion; Sherry, who knew he was vain of his judgment of

horseflesh, took no notice of the angry boast of Holloway, and burst into

exclamations of rapture on Holloway's steed. Holloway was softened, and

said his horse was one of the prettiest of creatures. Would not Mrs.

Sheridan like to have one like it?

"She would if he could canter well," said Sheridan.

"Beautifully," said Holloway.

"Perhaps I should not mind stretching a point for such a one. Will you

have the kindness to let me see his paces?"

"To be sure," said the lawyer.

The action was suited to the word, and Sherry cut off through the

churchyard, where no horse could follow. In spite of his many faults, his

utter unscrupulousness in money-matters being not the least, it is

particularly pleasant to refer to one of the incidents at the close of his

career which reveals a delightful little bit of sentiment and good

feeling, of which many of his detractors would have us think he was

incapable. When his goods were taken in execution in Hertford Street,

Mayfair, Paston, the sheriff's officer, said that if there was any

particular article upon which he set affectionate value, he might secrete

or carry it off from the premises.

"Thank you, my generous fellow," said Sheridan. "No, let all go--affection

and sentiment in my situation are quite out of the question. But," said

he, recollecting himself, "there is one thing which I wish to have."

"What is it?" said Paston, expecting him to name some cabinet or piece of

plate.

"Don't be alarmed," said Sheridan, "it is only this old book, worth all

others in the world, and to me of special value, because it belonged to my

father, and was the favourite of my first wife."

Paston looked into it, and it was a dogs'-eared edition of Shakespeare.

Another great man in the literary and histrionic professions, the

novelist, Fielding, although of an aristocratic stock, and liberally

educated, began life almost without pecuniary resources. He came before

the public first in 1725, and in succession was a showman at Bartholomew

and other fairs, the owner of a booth for theatrical performances, at one

time set up in George Yard, from which he found his way to the regular

boards. In spite of being the son of a general, and the great grandson of

an earl, his impecuniosity was often great, although he met his

difficulties with the light-hearted gaiety of a Sheridan, and the careless

imprudence of a Goldsmith.

Once, when in Ireland, he got into disgrace through giving a dancing-party

at his rooms; sold his books the next day, ran away from college, loafed

about Dublin till only a shilling was left, and then went to Cork. There

he lived three days on the shilling, and said afterwards the most

delicious meal he ever tasted was a handful of grey peas, given him by a

girl at a wake, after twenty-four hours' fasting.

Poor Oliver Goldsmith must, of course, have his place in this chapter, for

from the time when he wrote street ballads to save himself from starving,

and was delighted to hear them sung, to when he started on "the grand

tour," alone and friendless, with one spare shirt, a flute, and a guinea

in his pocket, to the last scene of hopeless insolvency in which he died,

his life was one long, hard struggle against pecuniary difficulties. When

his relatives raised L50 to send him to London to study, he spent and

gambled all away, and got no farther than Dublin. The result of his wildly

rash act of going abroad so ill provided he has himself described. In a

foreign land, when without money, he turned to his flute as a last

resource, and whenever he approached a peasant's cottage towards

nightfall, he played one of his merriest tunes, and so generally contrived

to win a shelter for the night, and some food for his next day's journey.

In this way he passed through Flanders, parts of France, Germany and

Switzerland, reaching Padua at last; remaining there six months to secure

his medical degree. Returning in 1756, and failing to find employment, he

was at last taken in by a chemist by way of charity, and to preserve him

from starvation. His friend, Dr. Sleigh, next befriended him, and then he

became usher to Dr. Milner's school in Peckham. Soon after he found

literary employment, and took a lodging at No. 12, Green Arbour Court, in

the Old Bailey--a miserable, dirty room, with but one chair. He did not

emerge from this squalid, dismal abode until 1760, when improved

circumstances enabled him to lodge in Wine Office Court, Fleet Street,

where he received his friends with a freedom and hospitality which soon

reduced his means to the level of impecuniosity. Here he first met Dr.

Johnson, who became his dearest friend and best adviser.

Johnson has described how he received one morning a message from poor

Goldsmith, to the effect that he was in great distress, and as it was not

in his power to go to the Doctor, begging that the Doctor would come to

him as soon as possible.

"I sent him a guinea," says Johnson, "and promised to come to him

directly. I accordingly went as soon as I was dressed, and found that

his landlady had arrested him for rent, at which he was in a violent

passion. I perceived that he had already changed my guinea, and had

got a bottle of Madeira and a glass before him. I put the cork into

the bottle, desired he would be calm, and began to talk to him of the

means by which he might be extricated. He then told me that he had a

novel ready for the press, which he produced to me. I looked into it

and saw its merits, and told the landlady I should soon return, and,

having gone to a bookseller, sold it for L60. I brought Goldsmith the

money, and he discharged his rent, not without rating his landlady for

having used him so ill."

The novel thus sold was the 'Vicar of Wakefield,' and its purchaser,

Francis Newberry, the bookseller, who kept it unprinted for two years,

when its author's 'Traveller,' having appeared and proved successful, the

novel was published (in March 1766) and in a month reached a second

edition.

In Forster's 'Life of Goldsmith,' the following account of his earliest

state of penury has no little romantic interest:--

"It was," says the author of that famous work, "a year and a half

after he had entered college, at the commencement of 1747, his father

suddenly died. The scanty sums required for his support had often been

intercepted; but this stopped them altogether. It may have been the

least and most trifling loss connected with that sorrow; but 'squalid

poverty,' relieved by occasional gifts, according to his small means,

from Uncle Contarine, by petty loans from Bryanton or Beatty, or by

desperate pawning of his books of study, was Goldsmith's lot

henceforward. Yet even in the depths of that despair arose the

consciousness of faculties reserved for better fortune than continual

contempt and failure. He would write street ballads to save himself

from actual starving; sell them at the Reindeer repository in

Mountrath Court for five shillings apiece, and steal out of the

college at night to hear them sung.

"Happy night, to him worth all the dreary days! Hidden by some dusky

wall, or creeping within darkling shadows of the ill-lighted streets,

this poor neglected sizar watched, waited, lingered, listened there,

for the only effort of his life which had not wholly failed. Few and

dull perhaps the beggar's audience at first, but more thronging,

eager, and delighted as he shouted forth his newly-gotten ware;

cracked enough, I doubt not, were those ballad singing tunes; nay,

harsh, extremely discordant, and passing from loud to low without

meaning or melody; but not the less did the sweetest music which this

earth affords fall with them on the ear of Goldsmith. Gentle faces,

pleased old men, stopping by the way; young lads, venturing a purchase

with their last remaining farthing; why here was a world in little

with its fame at the sizar's feet! 'The greater world will be

listening one day,' perhaps he muttered as he turned with a lighter

heart to his dull home."

Johnson's sympathy with Goldsmith was, no doubt, warmed and quickened by

the remembrance of his own early struggles with the foul fiend

impecuniosity. He remembered well enough his first London lodging in

Exeter Street, Strand, when, as he said, "I dined very well for

eightpence, with very good company, at the Pine Apple in New Street fast

by. Several of them had travelled, they expected to meet every day; but

they did not know one another's names. It used to cost the rest a

shilling, for they drank wine; but I had a cut of meat for sixpence, and

bread for a penny, so that I was quite well served, nay, better than the

rest, for they gave the waiter nothing."

Johnson used to relate of an Irish painter, that he, the painter,

practically realised a theory that L30 a year was enough to enable a man

to live there without being contemptible. He allowed L10 for clothes and

linen. He said, "A man might live in a garret at eighteen pence a week.

Few people would inquire where he lodged; and if they did it was easy to

say, 'Sir, I am to be found at such a place.' By spending threepence in a

coffee-house, he might be for some hours in very good company; he might

dine for sixpence, breakfast on bread and milk for a penny, and do without

supper. On clean shirt day he could go abroad and pay visits."

I have already quoted the Doctor's views on the subject of impecuniosity,

and this reminds me of a very suggestive incident of his life, which

perhaps will prove better than anything else the non-desirability of want

of means. It is unquestionable that in his marvellous dictionary, there

are parts that are much superior to others, which has been accounted for

by the fact that he was paid for the work as it progressed--the publisher

paying him as his "copy" was delivered. Consequently, when his purse was

full, he worked away _con amore_, and produced the best result; but on the

purse growing empty, as those mercenary creditors will do, the Doctor

worked hurriedly, aiming at making as much "copy" as possible, so as to

replenish his failing treasury.

Thomas Cooper, author of the 'Purgatory of Suicides,' who also found out

by severe experience the cheapest way of living in London, tells in his

autobiography how, after having been at Lincoln as reporter, journalist,

and miscellaneous literary man, he with his wife left that city for

London. He says:

"On the 1st of June, 1839, we got on the stage-coach with our boxes of

books at Stamford, and away I went to make my first venture in London.

We lodged in Elliott's Row, Southwark; I earned five pounds by

contributing reviews and prose sketches to some papers having but an

ephemeral existence. I had other ventures and adventures in a small

way; but it would weary any mortal man to recite; and the recital

would only be one which has been often told already, by poor literary

adventurers. The very little I could bring to London was soon gone,

and then I had to sell my books. I happily turned into Chancery Lane

and asked Mr. Lumley to buy my beautifully-bound 'Tasso' and 'Don

Belleanis of Greece,' a small quarto black-letter romance, which I had

bought of an auctioneer in Gainsboro', who knew nothing of its value.

Mr. Lumley gave me liberal prices, wished I could bring him more such

books, and conversed with me very kindly. We were often at 'low-water

mark' now in our fortunes; but my dear wife and I never suffered

ourselves to sink into low spirits. Our experience, we cheerily said,

was a part of London adventure, and who did not know that adventurers

in London often underwent great trials before success was reached? We

strolled out together in the evenings all over London, making

ourselves acquainted with its highways and byways, and always finding

something to interest us in its streets and shop-windows. Every book I

brought from Lincolnshire, and I had had about 500 volumes great and

small, had been sold by degrees, and at last I was obliged to enter a

pawnshop. Spare articles of clothing, and my father's old silver

watch, 'went up the spout,' as the experience goes of those who most

sorrowfully know what it means. Travelling-cloak, large box, hat-box,

and every box or movable that could be spared in any possible way, had

'gone to our uncle's,' and we saw ourselves on the very verge of

being reduced to threadbare suits when deliverance came. I had been in

London from the evening of 11th June, 1839, until near the end of

March, 1840, when I answered an advertisement respecting the

editorship of a country paper printed in London. I went to the

printing office in Great Windmill Street, Haymarket, and was engaged

at a salary of L3 per week; the paper was the _Kentish Mercury_."

Very similar was the experience of Robert Southey, who, disowned by

friends, and without money, came to London seeking literary employment, in

which alone he found content and happiness.

"For it," say his biographers, Messrs. Austin and Ralph, "he

sacrificed proffered rank and power; and joyfully devoted to its

service a toiling life of unexampled industry. Yet this man so wedded

to his absorbing vocation, in the social capacity of husband, father,

relative, and friend, stands above reproach.

"His life is one emphatic denial of the daring falsehood, that genius

and virtue are incompatible.

"England knew not a happier circle than that which for years assembled

by the humble hearthstone at Greta Hall. It is refreshing to turn

aside from the world and contemplate that peaceful home, nestling amid

the Cumberland Mountains."

Such an opinion again hardly fits in with that of Thackeray already

quoted.

"On Friday, October 18th, 1794, his aunt, Miss Tyler, turned him out

of doors on a stormy night, and without a penny in his pocket. He made

his way on foot, through wind and driving rain, along the dark country

roads to Bath. Without any visible resource he was thrown upon the

world, and as he paced the streets, weary, footsore, and sick at

heart, he dreamed of the lofty things in literature he would strive to

accomplish, now that he was his own master, with a will unfettered by

a care for wishes other than his own, and of the pride that would glow

within the swelling bosom of the fair Edith of his love, for whose

dear sake he had submitted to be thus cast adrift. An uncle from

Portugal wished to take him back with him to that country. 'My Edith

persuades me to go,' said he, 'and yet weeps at my going.' And we are

told how sadly after their secret marriage in Redcliffe Church, his

maiden wife watched his departure with the wedding-ring she was afraid

to wear suspended round her neck."

In Southey's life by his son, we read that he had recourse under the

pressure of impecuniosity to delivering lectures at Bristol, and the

following prospectus is quoted:--

"Robert Southey, of Balliol College, Oxford, proposes to read a course

of Historical Lectures in the following order:--1st. Introductory on

the Origin and Progress of Society; 2nd. Legislation of Solon and

Lycurgus; 3rd. State of Greece from the Persian War to the Dissolution

of the Achaian League; 4th. Rise, Progress, and Decay of the Roman

Empire; 5th. Progress of Christianity; 6th. Manners and Irruptions of

the Northern Nations; Growth of the European States; Feudal System,

and other equally abstruse subjects."

The lectures were given in 1795, tickets for the course, 10_s._ 6_d._,

sold at Cottle's, bookseller, High Street.

Southey stated about this time that if he and Coleridge could get L150 a

year between them, they would marry and retire into the country.

Another of these friendless dreamers who came to London, seeking literary

employment and reputation, was George Borrow, the famous author of 'Romany

Rye,' 'The Bible in Spain,' 'Wild Wales,' etc., the son of a military

officer. He was born in Norfolk, early in the present century, and began

life at the desk of a solicitor at Norwich. Becoming disgusted with that

life, he started off with his stick and bundle to walk to London, where

with his knowledge of languages he hoped to have no difficulty in earning

a living. Reaching the great metropolis, he found out Sir Richard

Phillips, editor and proprietor of the _Monthly Magazine_, who suggested

that the young literary adventurer should devote himself to the writing of

Newgate lives and trials. Having spent his loose cash in buying books on

the subject, he went carefully to work. Sir Richard Phillips wanted less

care and more expedition.

Borrow sent in his copy too slowly to please his exacting and overbearing

employer, whose parsimony was only equalled by his greediness. He was paid

in bills subject to discount, and led altogether a very wretched life. One

morning he awoke with the disagreeable conviction that his plight had

grown desperate, only half-a-crown remaining in his purse. Wandering out

disconsolately, he saw a bill in the shop window of a bookseller, giving

notice that a "novel or tale was much wanted," went to his garret, and

after a meal of bread and water, began to write a fictitious biography of

'Joseph Tell.' At this he continued to work unceasingly, day after day,

eating nothing but bread, drinking only water, until on the fifth day the

story was finished. And none too soon, for after he had laid aside the

pen, want of rest and nourishment had so exhausted him that he swooned

away. He had threepence left, and to reinvigorate him after he had left

his MS., he spent the whole of that sum at one fell swoop on bread and

milk, and went to bed penniless. When he called, the bookseller was

willing to buy the novel, and after some haggling over the price, gave him

twenty pounds for it, a sum which was as veritable a godsend to him as the

price of the 'Vicar of Wakefield' was to Oliver Goldsmith.

Borrow's incessant writing reminds me of the incessant reading of the

poet, Gerald Massey, who was born in 1828, near Tring, in Herts, in a

little stone hovel, the rent of which was one shilling per week. His

father was a poor canal boatman, who supported himself and family on ten

shillings per week, and could not of course afford to give Gerald any

opportunities of educating himself. As soon as he had attained his eighth

year, he was set to work at a silk-mill, beginning work at five in the

morning, and quitting it at half-past six in the evening, for a weekly

wage of 1_s._ 9_d._ He was fifteen years of age when he came to London and

obtained employment as an errand-boy, and having taught himself to read,

eagerly devoured every book, paper, and magazine that was within his

reach.

Says Massey himself:

"Now I began to think that the course of all desire and the sum of all

existence was to read and get knowledge. Read, read, read. I used to

read at all possible times and all possible places; up in bed till two

or three in the morning, nothing daunted by once setting the bed on

fire. Greatly indebted was I to the bookstalls, where I have read a

great deal, often folding a leaf in a book, and returning the next day

to continue the subject; but sometimes the book was gone, and then

great was my grief. When out of a situation I have often gone without

a meal to purchase a book."

Another English poet who sprang from as low an origin, and who as a boy

was as uneducated as Massey, was John Clare, known as the Northamptonshire

poet. He was born at Helpston, a village near Peterboro', in 1793. His

father was a poverty-stricken farm labourer, a cripple, unable to exist

without occasional help from the parish, and whose struggle to keep the

most wretched of homes, and supply potatoes and water gruel for food, was

a ceaseless and desperate one. For all that, when the sickly little fellow

Jack was old enough for school, the few pence requisite for sending him

there were squeezed out of the poor father's weekly pittance, and when the

boy's own paltry earnings in the fields began to come in, merely a few

pence a week, he was sent to an evening school, the master of which

allowed him the run of his little library, a privilege of which John

enthusiastically and gratefully availed himself.

Often his parents returning from work found the boy, after being at school

till late, crouching down by the fire, and tracing in the faint glimmer of

a burning log, incomprehensible signs upon bits of paper and even wood,

too poor to buy paper of the coarsest kind. John was in the habit of

picking up shreds of the same material, such as used by grocers and other

tradesmen, and of scratching thereon signs and figures, sometimes with

pencil, oftener with charcoal. Never were there more ungracious and

unfavourable conditions for the study of arithmetic and algebra.

A maternal uncle, footman to a lawyer at Wisbech, called one day at

Helpston, and told the family there was a vacancy for a clerk in his

master's office. John was to apply. The mother ransacked her scanty

wardrobe, to try and give her son a decent appearance, made him a pair of

breeches out of an old dress, and a waistcoat out of a shawl, and begged

from village crones an old white necktie and a pair of old black woollen

gloves. What he wore was very large and also ancient. His costume excited

amazement as he went his way. He reached Wisbech by canal boat, saw his

uncle, was taken to Mr. Councillor Bellamy, who, after inspecting the

nephew, said, "Well, I may see him again." John, after staying a day or

two with his uncle, then went back home and became serving lad at the Blue

Bell, where he was treated well, and was able to pursue his beloved

studies. There, too, he fell in love with Mary Joyce, daughter of a

farmer, who forbade his daughter to have anything to do with the beggar

boy, so he carved her name on every tree.

At this time occurred a great event in the poet's life, one ever to be

remembered with a quickening pulse and a sense of mighty triumph. He had

read Thomson's 'Seasons,' which had been described to him as only a

trumpery book which could be bought for 1_s._ 6_d._ at Stamford. John had

only sixpence, and his wages were not due. He went to his father for a

shilling. Hopeless chance! His mother was also tried for that amount, and

by superhuman exertion she raised sevenpence; the fraction remaining and

required was raised at the Blue Bell. The day of the purchase came. Unable

to sleep through excitement, he was up before daybreak, and started off

for Stamford in hot haste. A six or seven mile walk was as nothing to the

ardent lad, and he arrived before the bookseller's shop he was seeking had

its shutters down. He waited and waited, and you can imagine his dismay

when at last he found that the shop never opened at all that day. So he

went back to Helpston. By the way a bright thought occurred. By making a

tremendous effort he obtained twopence more--proposed to a cowherd boy

that for one penny he should look after the cattle, and for another penny

keep the secret that he was going away for a few hours. Monday morning

arrived, and his confederate. John soon walked the eight miles to

Stamford. Bookseller's shop closed. John sat on the doorstep and waited.

Directly the door opened, the poor, thin, haggard country boy, with wild

gleaming eyes, rushed to him for a copy of the 'Seasons.' The tradesman

asked questions. John told his story in hurried words, and the bookseller

said that he would let him have a copy for a shilling. "Keep the sixpence,

my boy," said the man, and away went John. In Barnack Park, amidst some

thick shrubs, John Clare read the book. He did not know how to give vent

to his happiness, but he had a pencil and a piece of coarse crumpled paper

in his pocket, and on that he wrote his poem the 'Morning Walk.'

The remainder of Clare's life presents nothing specially remarkable beyond

the fact that he was throughout it curiously unlucky; and though from time

to time he met with good friends, misfortune had marked him for her own,

and eventually, through brooding over some unsuccessful commercial

enterprises, his mind gave way.

From John Clare to George Gordon Noel, Lord Byron, is a far cry; the

former being purely a small pastoral poet, the latter impurely a great

genius. _A propos_ of being involved and being indebted to the children of

Israel for supplies, his lordship wrote:

"In my young days they lent me cash that way,

Which I found very troublesome to pay."

Tom Moore says that Byron's marriage with the daughter of Sir Ralph

Milbank was contracted in the hope that her dowry would extricate him from

his monetary difficulties, but it apparently only increased his misery,

and, notwithstanding the serious reason for their separation, as given by

Mrs. Beecher Stowe, there is no doubt debt had a considerable share in

bringing it about, for "during the first year of his marriage his house

was nine times in the possession of bailiffs, his door almost daily beset

by duns, and he was only saved from gaol by the privileges of his rank."

Coming down to the more modern school of writers, it is especially

noticeable that the circumstances connected with their impecuniosity are

much less sombre in character than those of the like previous age. Douglas

Jerrold, the novelist, dramatist and essayist, contributes an amusing

reminiscence in connection with the first money he earned, a story which

he himself was wont to relate with great delight in after years. At the

time of the incident the young fellow's home was far from cheerful; his

mother and sister were away (in all probability acting in the provinces),

and he and his father were the sole occupants of the lodgings. Old Mr.

Jerrold was weak and ailing, and anything but good company for the

high-spirited, happy-natured boy, who eventually developed into one of the

most witty and satirical authors of his time. The picture of the poor old

gentleman sitting helplessly in the corner, when the wants of the family

so needed a strong arm to work for them, was undoubtedly depressing; but

the dreary monotony was broken on the day when Douglas Jerrold returned

home excitedly jubilant with his first earnings as an apprentice. A

thorough Englishman, he naturally thought the occasion must be celebrated

by a dinner and at once proceeded to purchase the ingredients of a

beef-steak pie. When he returned, amply repaid for the money he had

expended by the proud satisfaction visible on his father's face, he was

met by rather a serious difficulty. It was true the materials for the dish

were all there, but who was to make the delicacy? Mr. Jerrold, senior, was

incapable, and there was, therefore, nothing for it but for the boy to

turn to and try his hand at a crust. He did so, and amidst much merriment

the pie was made, taken to the baker's, and eaten by the happy pair (at

any rate, happy on that occasion), with a relish and pleasure no doubt far

in excess of that experienced at many of those grander banquets which he

afterwards graced by his presence. It is said by his son that "the memory

of this day always remained vivid to him. There was an odd kind of humour

about it that tickled him. It so thoroughly illustrated his notions on

independence that he could not forbear from dwelling again and again on

it among his friends."

There is no doubt that Douglas Jerrold cherished the memory of this

honourable impecuniosity as he did everything else that was noble and

pure, for in his slashing satire levelled against those meaningless

decorations or orders of the wealthy he clearly shows his lasting sympathy

for poverty with honour. He says: "The Order of Poverty--how many

sub-orders might it embrace! As the spirit of Gothic chivalry has its

fraternities, so might the Order of Poverty have its distinct devices." He

then goes on to enumerate the nobility and dignity of labour exemplified

in the cases of the peasant, the shepherd, the weaver, the potter, and

other callings, not neglecting even the pauper, of whom he writes:--

"And here is a pauper, missioned from the workhouse to break stones at

the roadside. How he strikes and strikes at that unyielding bit of

flint! Is it not the stony heart of the world's injustice knocked at

by poverty? What haggardness is in his face! What a blight hangs about

him! There are more years in his looks than in his bones. Time has

marked him with an iron pen. He wailed as a babe for bread his father

was not allowed to earn. He can recollect every dinner--they were so

few--of his childhood. He grew up, and want was with him, even as his

shadow. He has shivered with cold, fainted with hunger. His every-day

life has been set about by goading wretchedness.

"Around him, too, were the stores of plenty. Food, raiment, and money

mocked the man half-mad--mad with destitution. Yet, with a valorous

heart, a proud conquest of the shuddering spirit, he walked with

honesty and starved. His long journey of life has been through stormy

places, and now he sits upon a pile of stones on the wayside, breaking

them for workhouse bread. Could loftiest chivalry show greater

heroism, nobler self-control, than this old man--this weary breaker of

flints? Shall he not be of the Order of Poverty? Is not penury to him

even as a robe of honour? His grey workhouse coat braver than purple

and miniver? He shall be Knight of the Granite if you will. A

workhouse gem, indeed--a wretched highway jewel--yet, to the eye of

truth, finer than many a ducal diamond.... And so, indeed, in the mind

of wisdom, is poverty ennobled. And for the Knights of the Golden

Calf, how are they outnumbered! Let us then revive the Order of

Poverty. Ponder, reader, on its antiquity! For was not Christ Himself

Chancellor of the Order, and the Apostles Knight Companions?"

Although Douglas Jerrold may be best remembered by the many for his

felicitous epigrams and wondrous wit, it should be borne in mind that he

contributed materially to the high tone that now prevails in our

literature. The fine spirit was touched to fine issues, and the influences

which he aided by his life will be his enduring bequest to the future. He

was, like Dickens, constantly at war with abuses, ever writing with a

purpose, and always aiming to crush tyranny, injustice, or some kindred

social monster. Like Dickens, he delighted in assisting the cause of the

poor and weak, which characteristic, so conspicuous in both, may be

accounted for by the impecunious surroundings in which they were both

reared.

With regard to Charles Dickens, undeniably the most popular novelist of

this century, and generally considered to be one of the greatest

humourists we have ever had, it would seem as if we had to thank

impecuniosity for much of his marvellous characterisation; and though he

bitterly deplored the want of early education and proper home-training, it

is possible that but for the hardness of his youthful lot he might never

have developed the faculty of observation to the extent he did. From the

needy circumstances of his parents he was compelled from very early years

to think for himself; and this is, according to John Forster, what he

thought of his father:--

"He was proud of me in his way, and had a great admiration of the

comic singing. But in the ease of his temper and the straitness of his

means he appeared to have utterly lost at this time the idea of

educating me at all, and to have put from him the notion that I had

any claim upon him in that regard whatever. So I degenerated into

cleaning his boots of a morning and my own, and making myself useful

in the work of the little house, and looking after my younger brothers

and sisters (we were now six in all), and going on such poor errands

as arose out of our poor way of living."

After his father's arrest for debt and his incarceration in the Marshalsea

(particulars of which are so graphically described in 'David

Copperfield'), Charles Dickens, when little more than ten years of age,

was placed at a blacking manufactory, where he earned the sum of six

shillings per week, and which is thus described by him:--

"The blacking warehouse was the last house on the left hand side of

the way, at old Hungerford Stairs. It was a crazy tumble-down old

house abutting, of course, on the river, and literally overrun with

rats. The wainscotted rooms and its rotten floors and staircase and

the old grey rats swarming down in the cellars, and the sound of their

squeaking and scuffling coming up the stairs at all times, and the

dirt and decay of the place, rise up visibly before me as if I were

there again. My work was to cover the pots of paste blacking first

with a piece of oil paper and then with a piece of blue paper, to tie

them round with a string, and then to clip the paper close and neat

all round, until it looked as smart as a pot of ointment from an

apothecary's shop. When a certain number of grosses of pots had

attained this pitch of perfection, I was to paste on each a printed

label, and then go on again with more pots."

With regard to the way he lived at this time, he says:

"Usually I either carried my dinner with me or went and bought it at

some neighbouring shop. In the latter case it was commonly a saveloy

and a penny loaf, and sometimes a fourpenny plate of beef from a

cookshop, sometimes a plate of bread and cheese and a glass of beer

from a miserable old public-house over the way--the 'Swan,' if I

remember right, or the Swan and something else that I have forgotten.

Once I remember tucking my own bread (which I had brought from home in

the morning) under my arm, wrapped up in a piece of paper like a book,

and going into the best dining-room in Johnson's Alamode Beef House in

Charles' Court, Drury Lane, and magnificently ordering a small plate

of Alamode beef to eat with it. What the waiter thought of such a

strange little apparition coming in all alone, I don't know, but I can

see him now staring at me as I ate my dinner, and bringing up the

other waiter to look. I gave him a halfpenny, and I wish now that he

had not taken it."

Soon after Dickens entered upon his engagement at the uncongenial blacking

establishment, his mother's home was broken up and she joined his father

in the debtors' prison, and Master Charles was then placed with a Mrs.

Roylance at Camden Town, with whom he lodged for some time, boarding

himself on his six shillings a week, which he apparently found by no means

an easy job, as his appetite seems to have troubled him considerably by

this.

"I was so young and childish and so little qualified--how could I be

otherwise?--to undertake the whole charge of my own existence, that in

going to Hungerford Stairs of a morning I could not resist the stale

pastry put out at half price on trays at the confectioner's doors in

Tottenham Court Road. I often spent in that the money I should have

kept for my dinner. Then I went without my dinner, or bought a roll or

a slice of pudding. There were two pudding shops between which I was

divided according to my finances. One was in a court close to St.

Martin's Church (at the back of the church), which is now removed

altogether. The pudding at that shop was made with currants, and was

rather a special pudding, but was dear: two penn'orth not being larger

than a penn'orth of more ordinary pudding. A good shop for the latter

was in the Strand, somewhere near where the Lowther Arcade is now. It

was a stout, hale pudding, heavy and flabby, with great raisins in it

stuck in whole, at great distances apart. It came up hot, at about

noon every day, and many and many a day did I dine off it. I know I do

not exaggerate, unconsciously and unintentionally, the scantiness of

my resources and the difficulties of my life. I know that if a

shilling or so were given me by any one I spent it in a dinner or a

tea. I know that I worked from morning to night with common men and

boys, a shabby child. I know that I tried, but ineffectually, not to

anticipate my money, and to make it last the week through, by putting

it away in a drawer I had in the counting-house, wrapped into six

little parcels, each parcel containing the same amount, and labelled

with a different day. I know that I have lounged about the streets

insufficiently and unsatisfactorily fed. I know that, but for the

mercy of God, I might easily have been, for any care that was taken of

me, a little robber or a little vagabond."

Contemporary with Dickens figured another popular writer of light fiction,

who, though perhaps a trifle jollier and more genial in his fun, cannot

claim to be placed in the same category with the immortal author of

'Nicholas Nickleby,' 'A Tale of Two Cities,' etc. etc. I allude to Albert

Smith, who whether detailing on paper "The Adventures of Mr. Ledbury" or

recounting to an audience at the Egyptian Hall his "Ascent of Mont Blanc,"

was always extremely amusing.

Owing to a slight similarity in the style of their writing it sometimes

happened that unfortunate comparisons were made between the two men, when

naturally poor Albert Smith suffered. For instance, when a friend speaking

of the two authors to Douglas Jerrold said, that as humourists Charles

Dickens and Albert Smith "rowed in the same boat," Jerrold replied with

more or less warmth, "True, they do row in the same boat, but with very

different skulls." Unlike Dickens, Albert Smith was not practically

acquainted with absolute poverty, though at times as a student there is no

doubt he was familiar with that condition known as "rather short of

funds," and his account of an Alpine journey made on the most economical

principles may be cited as curious and not unconnected with impecuniosity.

In September 1838 he started from Paris for Chamounix with another equally

humbly appointed traveller, who like himself intended to do the grand

Alpine tour with L12, which was to pay for travelling expenses and board

and lodging for five weeks. They carried their money in five-franc pieces,

stuffed in leathern belts round their waists, bought two old military

knapsacks at three francs each, and two pairs of hobnailed shoes at five

and a half francs each. Before starting they made a good breakfast at a

_cafe_ and obtained from the cook a dozen hard-boiled eggs for the

journey, supplying themselves also with a _litre_ of _vin ordinaire_, a

flat bottle of brandy, and a leathern cup that folded up. Opposition

_diligences_ were running on the road from Paris to Geneva, and for two

pounds they secured seats on one which took seventy-eight successive

hours--_i.e._, from 8 o'clock on Friday morning till 2 P.M. on the

following Monday. On arriving at the place where the other passengers

lunched at a cost of three francs, Smith and his friend regaled themselves

on their eggs, with the addition of some bread and pears bought in the

town, which place they inspected while their fellow-travellers were

luxuriating over their _dejeuner_. When dinner-time came, instead of

patronising the hotel, they repaired to a more humble restaurant, and for

24 sous each obtained all that they required. At night they crept under

the tarpaulin roof of the _diligence_, stacked all the luggage on each

side, and collecting some straw, on which they reclined, slept tolerably

well. In the morning they walked on before the conveyance started, bathed

in the river, and after breakfast (managed in the same inexpensive way),

were picked up by the diligence. In this manner they travelled for the

three days, observing pretty much the same routine (except on the Sunday,

when they washed at the fountain in the market-place at Dole, to the great

delight and amusement of a party of girls, who lent them towels and a huge

piece of soap), their expenses for the journey to Geneva being L2 12_s._

6_d._ each. As a specimen of how they managed to do and see so much on so

very little: at Arpenay, where a cannon is fired to produce a certain

marvellous echo, they simply waited until a party more capable of paying

for such a luxury arrived, and then availed themselves of the opportunity.

On the same principle, when starting for the Mer de Glace they followed a

party at some little distance, and by this means dispensed with the

services of a guide. They bathed on the top of the Foxlay, and there in

the springs, washed their linen, spreading their things on the stones

afterwards to dry; and in such way the Alpine tour was made by the two

friends completely, safely, and without exceeding the amount of funds they

possessed.

Scarcely so honourable, though a trifle more exciting, is a reminiscence

related of the late Robert Brough, more generally known to those who were

acquainted with him and loved him dearly as Bob Brough. Unfortunately he

was a man who was unable to make his income and expenditure balance:

whether it was that the former was too small, or the latter too large, it

matters not; but as a natural consequence, debt and difficulty were his

constant companions. At one time when things had been going very badly

(that is, in all probability to mine uncle's) he found it necessary to

seek a more congenial clime. England was found to be unpleasantly hot,

owing to the warm attention of a money-lending creditor, and foreign

travel was known to be absolutely imperative. The proprietor of the

_Sunday Times_ being made acquainted with the circumstances commissioned

him to write a series of articles, to be entitled "Brussels Sprouts."

Desirous of executing the commission, and longing for a dip in the sea, he

started off to Ostend, and on arriving there, was not long in going

through the preliminaries of taking "a header." He took it, but to his

horror on coming to the surface he met with what is slangily termed a

"facer," for he found himself face to face with the identical creditor

from whom he was fleeing. "Oh, this is the way my money goes, is it! I'll

lock you up, you----" began the money-lender, but before the sentence was

finished Brough dived again, swam to shore, secured his luggage, started

for Paris, and left the "Brussels Sprouts" to take care of themselves.

As I commenced this chapter by quoting the somewhat ungenerous strictures

of Thackeray on his unhappy brethren, it will be a fitting termination to

close with an incident of impecuniosity connected with his life, which

circumstance, by the way, was caused by no fault of his. How could it have

been? He was so terribly correct and proper! However, when sojourning on

one occasion in France, he had the misfortune to be robbed of his purse,

and immediately wrote off to a relative for fresh supplies. In the

meantime he borrowed a ten-pound note, which he spent in little more than

a week, thinking he should by that time be in possession of a remittance

from his aunt. But no remittance came. He then humorously describes the

horrors that arose in his mind as day after day passed on and there was no

response from England. His intense desire for a frothy pot of beer,

ungratified of course from his impecunious state, his alarm lest the

landlord should present his bill, and his forebodings when passing a

prison-house, with his elation of spirits when the long-delayed cheque at

length arrived, are presented with all the charm of comedy and the

interest of romance, and playfully alluded to in these four lines:--

"My heart is weary, my peace is gone,

How shall I e'er my woes reveal?

I have no money, I lie in pawn,

A stranger in the town of Lille."