I
Do you know what it is to be poor? Not poor with the arrogant poverty
complained of by certain people who have five or six thousand a year to
live upon, and who yet swear they can hardly manage to make both ends
meet, but really poor,--downright, cruelly, hideously poor, with a
poverty that is graceless, sordid and miserable? Poverty that compels
you to dress in your one suit of clothes till it is worn
threadbare,--that denies you clean linen on account of the ruinous
charges of washerwomen,--that robs you of your own self-respect, and
causes you to slink along the streets vaguely abashed, instead of
walking erect among your fellow-men in independent ease,--this is the
sort of poverty I mean. This is the grinding curse that keeps down noble
aspiration under a load of ignoble care; this is the moral cancer that
eats into the heart of an otherwise well-intentioned human creature and
makes him envious and malignant, and inclined to the use of dynamite.
When he sees the fat idle woman of society passing by in her luxurious
carriage, lolling back lazily, her face mottled with the purple and red
signs of superfluous eating,--when he observes the brainless and sensual
man of fashion smoking and dawdling away the hours in the Park, as if
all the world and its millions of honest hard workers were created
solely for the casual diversion of the so-called 'upper' classes,--then
the good blood in him turns to gall, and his suffering spirit rises in
fierce rebellion, crying out--"Why in God's name, should this injustice
be? Why should a worthless lounger have his pockets full of gold by mere
chance and heritage, while I, toiling wearily from morn till midnight,
can scarce afford myself a satisfying meal?"
Why indeed! Why should the wicked flourish like a green bay-tree? I have
often thought about it. Now however I believe I could help to solve the
problem out of my own personal experience. But ... such an experience!
Who will credit it? Who will believe that anything so strange and
terrific ever chanced to the lot of a mortal man? No one. Yet it is
true;--truer than much so-called truth. Moreover I know that many men
are living through many such incidents as have occurred to me, under
precisely the same influence, conscious perhaps at times, that they are
in the tangles of sin, but too weak of will to break the net in which
they have become voluntarily imprisoned. Will they be taught, I wonder,
the lesson I have learned? In the same bitter school, under the same
formidable taskmaster? Will they realize as I have been forced to
do,--aye, to the very fibres of my intellectual perception,--the vast,
individual, active Mind, which behind all matter, works unceasingly,
though silently, a very eternal and positive God? If so, then dark
problems will become clear to them, and what seems injustice in the
world will prove pure equity! But I do not write with any hope of either
persuading or enlightening my fellow-men. I know their obstinacy too
well;--I can gauge it by my own. My proud belief in myself was, at one
time, not to be outdone by any human unit on the face of the globe. And
I am aware that others are in similar case. I merely intend to relate
the various incidents of my career in due order exactly as they
happened,--leaving to more confident heads the business of propounding
and answering the riddles of human existence as best they may.
During a certain bitter winter, long remembered for its arctic severity,
when a great wave of intense cold spread freezing influences not alone
over the happy isles of Britain, but throughout all Europe, I, Geoffrey
Tempest, was alone in London and well-nigh starving. Now a starving man
seldom gets the sympathy he merits,--so few can be persuaded to believe
in him. Worthy folks who have just fed to repletion are the most
incredulous, some of them being even moved to smile when told of
existing hungry people, much as if these were occasional jests invented
for after-dinner amusement. Or, with that irritating vagueness of
attention which characterizes fashionable folk to such an extent that
when asking a question they neither wait for the answer nor understand
it when given, the well-dined groups, hearing of some one starved to
death, will idly murmur 'How dreadful!' and at once turn to the
discussion of the latest 'fad' for killing time, ere it takes to killing
them with sheer _ennui_. The pronounced fact of being hungry sounds
coarse and common, and is not a topic for polite society, which always
eats more than sufficient for its needs. At the period I am speaking of
however, I, who have since been one of the most envied of men, knew the
cruel meaning of the word hunger, too well,--the gnawing pain, the sick
faintness, the deadly stupor, the insatiable animal craving for mere
food, all of which sensations are frightful enough to those who are,
unhappily, daily inured to them, but which when they afflict one who has
been tenderly reared and brought up to consider himself a
'gentleman,'--God save the mark! are perhaps still more painful to bear.
And I felt that I had not deserved to suffer the wretchedness in which I
found myself. I had worked hard. From the time my father died, leaving
me to discover that every penny of the fortune I imagined he possessed
was due to swarming creditors, and that nothing of all our house and
estate was left to me except a jewelled miniature of my mother who had
lost her own life in giving me birth,--from that time I say, I had put
my shoulder to the wheel and toiled late and early. I had turned my
University education to the only use for which it or I seemed
fitted,--literature. I had sought for employment on almost every journal
in London,--refused by many, taken on trial by some, but getting steady
pay from none. Whoever seeks to live by brain and pen alone is, at the
beginning of such a career, treated as a sort of social pariah. Nobody
wants him,--everybody despises him. His efforts are derided, his
manuscripts are flung back to him unread, and he is less cared for than
the condemned murderer in gaol. The murderer is at least fed and
clothed,--a worthy clergyman visits him, and his gaoler will
occasionally condescend to play cards with him. But a man gifted with
original thoughts and the power of expressing them, appears to be
regarded by everyone in authority as much worse than the worst criminal,
and all the 'jacks-in-office' unite to kick him to death if they can. I
took both kicks and blows in sullen silence and lived on,--not for the
love of life, but simply because I scorned the cowardice of
self-destruction. I was young enough not to part with hope too
easily;--the vague idea I had that my turn would come,--that the
ever-circling wheel of Fortune would perchance lift me up some day as it
now crushed me down, kept me just wearily capable of continuing
existence,--though it was merely a continuance and no more. For about
six months I got some reviewing work on a well-known literary journal.
Thirty novels a week were sent to me to 'criticise,'--I made a habit of
glancing hastily at about eight or ten of them, and writing one column
of rattling abuse concerning these thus casually selected,--the
remainder were never noticed at all. I found that this mode of action
was considered 'smart,' and I managed for a time to please my editor who
paid me the munificent sum of fifteen shillings for my weekly labour.
But on one fatal occasion I happened to change my tactics and warmly
praised a work which my own conscience told me was both original and
excellent. The author of it happened to be an old enemy of the
proprietor of the journal on which I was employed;--my eulogistic review
of the hated individual, unfortunately for me, appeared, with the result
that private spite outweighed public justice, and I was immediately
dismissed.
After this I dragged on in a sufficiently miserable way, doing 'hack
work' for the dailies, and living on promises that never became
realities, till, as I have said, in the early January of the bitter
winter alluded to, I found myself literally penniless and face to face
with starvation, owing a month's rent besides for the poor lodging I
occupied in a back street not far from the British Museum. I had been
out all day trudging from one newspaper office to another, seeking for
work and finding none. Every available post was filled. I had also
tried, unsuccessfully, to dispose of a manuscript of my own,--a work of
fiction which I knew had some merit, but which all the 'readers' in the
publishing offices appeared to find exceptionally worthless. These
'readers' I learned, were most of them novelists themselves, who read
other people's productions in their spare moments and passed judgment on
them. I have always failed to see the justice of this arrangement; to me
it seems merely the way to foster mediocrities and suppress originality.
Common sense points out the fact that the novelist 'reader' who has a
place to maintain for himself in literature would naturally rather
encourage work that is likely to prove ephemeral, than that which might
possibly take a higher footing than his own. Be this as it may, and
however good or bad the system, it was entirely prejudicial to me and my
literary offspring. The last publisher I tried was a kindly man who
looked at my shabby clothes and gaunt face with some commiseration.
"I'm sorry," said he, "very sorry, but my readers are quite unanimous.
From what I can learn, it seems to me you have been too earnest. And
also, rather sarcastic in certain strictures against society. My dear
fellow, that won't do. Never blame society,--it buys books! Now if you
could write a smart love-story, slightly _risqué_,--even a little more
than _risqué_ for that matter; that is the sort of thing that suits the
present age."
"Pardon me," I interposed somewhat wearily--"but are you sure you judge
the public taste correctly?"
He smiled a bland smile of indulgent amusement at what he no doubt
considered my ignorance in putting such a query.
"Of course I am sure,"--he replied--"It is my business to know the
public taste as thoroughly as I know my own pocket. Understand me,--I
don't suggest that you should write a book on any positively indecent
subject,--that can be safely left to the 'New' woman,"--and he
laughed,--"but I assure you high-class fiction doesn't sell. The critics
don't like it, to begin with. What goes down with them and with the
public is a bit of sensational realism told in terse newspaper English.
Literary English,--Addisonian English,--is a mistake."
"And I am also a mistake I think," I said with a forced smile--"At any
rate if what you say be true, I must lay down the pen and try another
trade. I am old-fashioned enough to consider Literature as the highest
of all professions, and I would rather not join in with those who
voluntarily degrade it."
He gave me a quick side-glance of mingled incredulity and depreciation.
"Well, well!" he finally observed--"you are a little quixotic. That will
wear off. Will you come on to my club and dine with me?"
I refused this invitation promptly. I knew the man saw and recognised my
wretched plight,--and pride--false pride if you will--rose up to my
rescue. I bade him a hurried good-day, and started back to my lodging,
carrying my rejected manuscript with me. Arrived there, my landlady met
me as I was about to ascend the stairs, and asked me whether I would
'kindly settle accounts' the next day. She spoke civilly enough, poor
soul, and not without a certain compassionate hesitation in her manner.
Her evident pity for me galled my spirit as much as the publisher's
offer of a dinner had wounded my pride,--and with a perfectly audacious
air of certainty I at once promised her the money at the time she
herself appointed, though I had not the least idea where or how I should
get the required sum. Once past her, and shut in my own room, I flung my
useless manuscript on the floor and myself into a chair, and--swore. It
refreshed me to swear, and it seemed natural,--for though temporarily
weakened by lack of food, I was not yet so weak as to shed tears,--and a
fierce formidable oath was to me the same sort of physical relief which
I imagine a fit of weeping may be to an excitable woman. Just as I could
not shed tears, so was I incapable of apostrophizing God in my despair.
To speak frankly, I did not believe in any God--_then_. I was to myself
an all-sufficing mortal, scorning the time-worn superstitions of
so-called religion. Of course I had been brought up in the Christian
faith; but that creed had become worse than useless to me since I had
intellectually realized the utter inefficiency of Christian ministers to
deal with difficult life-problems. Spiritually I was adrift in
chaos,--mentally I was hindered both in thought and achievement,--bodily,
I was reduced to want. My case was desperate,--I myself was desperate.
It was a moment when if ever good and evil angels play a game of chance
for a man's soul, they were surely throwing the dice on the last wager
for mine. And yet, with it all, I felt I had done my best. I was driven
into a corner by my fellow-men who grudged me space to live in, but I
had fought against it. I had worked honestly and patiently;--all to no
purpose. I knew of rogues who gained plenty of money; and of knaves who
were amassing large fortunes. Their prosperity appeared to prove that
honesty after all was _not_ the best policy. What should I do then? How
should I begin the jesuitical business of committing evil that good,
personal good, might come of it? So I thought, dully, if such stray
half-stupefied fancies as I was capable of, deserved the name of thought.
The night was bitter cold. My hands were numbed, and I tried to warm
them at the oil-lamp my landlady was good enough to still allow me the
use of, in spite of delayed cash-payments. As I did so, I noticed three
letters on the table,--one in a long blue envelope suggestive of either
a summons or a returned manuscript,--one bearing the Melbourne postmark,
and the third a thick square missive coroneted in red and gold at the
back. I turned over all three indifferently, and selecting the one from
Australia, balanced it in my hand a moment before opening it. I knew
from whom it came, and idly wondered what news it brought me. Some
months previously I had written a detailed account of my increasing
debts and difficulties to an old college chum, who finding England too
narrow for his ambition had gone out to the wider New world on a
speculative quest of gold mining. He was getting on well, so I
understood, and had secured a fairly substantial position; and I had
therefore ventured to ask him point-blank for the loan of fifty pounds.
Here, no doubt, was his reply, and I hesitated before breaking the seal.
"Of course it will be a refusal," I said half-aloud,--"However kindly a
friend may otherwise be, he soon turns crusty if asked to lend money. He
will express many regrets, accuse trade and the general bad times and
hope I will soon 'tide over.' I know the sort of thing. Well,--after
all, why should I expect him to be different to other men? I've no claim
on him beyond the memory of a few sentimental arm-in-arm days at
Oxford."
A sigh escaped me in spite of myself, and a mist blurred my sight for
the moment. Again I saw the grey towers of peaceful Magdalen, and the
fair green trees shading the walks in and around the dear old University
town where we,--I and the man whose letter I now held in my
hand,--strolled about together as happy youths, fancying that we were
young geniuses born to regenerate the world. We were both fond of
classics,--we were brimful of Homer and the thoughts and maxims of all
the immortal Greeks and Latins,--and I verily believe, in those
imaginative days, we thought we had in us such stuff as heroes are made
of. But our entrance into the social arena soon robbed us of our sublime
conceit,--we were common working units, no more,--the grind and prose of
daily life put Homer into the background, and we soon discovered that
society was more interested in the latest unsavoury scandal than in the
tragedies of Sophocles or the wisdom of Plato. Well! it was no doubt
extremely foolish of us to dream that we might help to regenerate a
world in which both Plato and Christ appear to have failed,--yet the
most hardened cynic will scarcely deny that it is pleasant to look back
to the days of his youth if he can think that at least then, if only
once in his life, he had noble impulses.
The lamp burned badly, and I had to re-trim it before I could settle
down to read my friend's letter. Next door some-one was playing a violin,
and playing it well. Tenderly and yet with a certain amount of _brio_
the notes came dancing from the bow, and I listened, vaguely pleased.
Being faint with hunger I was somewhat in a listless state bordering on
stupor,--and the penetrating sweetness of the music appealing to the
sensuous and æsthetic part of me, drowned for the moment mere animal
craving.
"There you go!" I murmured, apostrophizing the unseen
musician,--"practising away on that friendly fiddle of yours,--no doubt
for a mere pittance which barely keeps you alive. Possibly you are some
poor wretch in a cheap orchestra,--or you might even be a street-player
and be able to live in this neighbourhood of the _élite_ starving,--you
can have no hope whatever of being the 'fashion' and making your bow
before Royalty,--or if you have that hope, it is wildly misplaced. Play
on, my friend, play on!--the sounds you make are very agreeable, and
seem to imply that you are happy. I wonder if you are?--or if, like me,
you are going rapidly to the devil!"
The music grew softer and more plaintive, and was now accompanied by the
rattle of hailstones against the window-panes. A gusty wind whistled
under the door and roared down the chimney,--a wind cold as the grasp of
death and searching as a probing knife. I shivered,--and bending close
over the smoky lamp, prepared to read my Australian news. As I opened
the envelope, a bill for fifty pounds, payable to me at a well-known
London banker's, fell out upon the table. My heart gave a quick bound of
mingled relief and gratitude.
"Why Jack, old fellow, I wronged you!" I exclaimed,--"Your heart is in
the right place after all."
And profoundly touched by my friend's ready generosity, I eagerly
perused his letter. It was not very long, and had evidently been written
off in haste.
Dear Geoff,
I'm sorry to hear you are down on your luck; it shows what a crop of
fools are still flourishing in London, when a man of your capability
cannot gain his proper place in the world of letters, and be
fittingly acknowledged. I believe it's all a question of
wire-pulling, and money is the only thing that will pull the wires.
Here's the fifty you ask for and welcome,--don't hurry about paying
it back. I am doing you a good turn this year by sending you a
friend,--a real friend, mind you!--no sham. He brings you a letter
of introduction from me, and between ourselves, old man, you cannot
do better than put yourself and your literary affairs entirely in
his hands. He knows everybody, and is up to all the dodges of
editorial management and newspaper cliques. He is a great
philanthropist besides,--and seems particularly fond of the society
of the clergy. Rather a queer taste you will say, but his reason for
such preference is, as he has explained to me quite frankly, that he
is so enormously wealthy that he does not quite know what to do with
his money, and the reverend gentlemen of the church are generally
ready to show him how to spend some of it. He is always glad to know
of some quarter where his money and influence (he is very
influential) may be useful to others. He has helped me out of a very
serious hobble, and I owe him a big debt of gratitude. I've told him
all about you,--what a smart fellow you are, and what a lot dear old
Alma Mater thought of you, and he has promised to give you a lift
up. He can do anything he likes; very naturally, seeing that the
whole world of morals, civilization and the rest is subservient to
the power of money,--and _his_ stock of cash appears to be
limitless. _Use him_; he is willing and ready to be used,--and write
and let me know how you get on. Don't bother about the fifty till
you feel you have tided over the storm.
Ever yours
Boffles.
I laughed as I read the absurd signature, though my eyes were dim with
something like tears. 'Boffles' was the nickname given to my friend by
several of our college companions, and neither he nor I knew how it
first arose. But no one except the dons ever addressed him by his proper
name, which was John Carrington,--he was simply 'Boffles,' and Boffles
he remained even now for all those who had been his intimates. I
refolded and put by his letter and the draft for the fifty pounds, and
with a passing vague wonder as to what manner of man the
'philanthropist' might be who had more money than he knew what to do
with, I turned to the consideration of my other two correspondents,
relieved to feel that now, whatever happened, I could settle up arrears
with my landlady the next day as I had promised. Moreover I could order
some supper, and have a fire lit to cheer my chilly room. Before
attending to these creature comforts however, I opened the long blue
envelope that looked so like a threat of legal proceedings, and
unfolding the paper within, stared at it amazedly. What was it all
about? The written characters danced before my eyes,--puzzled and
bewildered, I found myself reading the thing over and over again without
any clear comprehension of it. Presently a glimmer of meaning flashed
upon me, startling my senses like an electric shock, ...
no--no--!--impossible! Fortune never could be so mad as this!--never so
wildly capricious and grotesque of humour! It was some senseless hoax
that was being practised upon me, ... and yet, ... if it were a joke, it
was a very elaborate and remarkable one! Weighted with the majesty of
the law too! ... Upon my word and by all the fantastical freakish
destinies that govern human affairs, the news seemed actually positive
and genuine!