Young Lives Part 19

"Idealists! Yes," he continued; "for what few understand is that drink is an idealism--and," he presently added with a laugh, "and, of course, like all idealisms, it has its dangers."

With a monomaniac, conversation is apt to limit itself to monologue; so, while Henry was greatly interested in this odd talk, it left him but little to say.

"I'm afraid I shock you a little, Mr. Mesurier, perhaps even--disgust you," said Mr. Gerard.

"Indeed, no!" exclaimed Henry; "but both the subject and your way of treating it are, I confess, a little new to me."

"You are surprised to find one who is what is popularly known as a drunkard not so much ashamed of as interested in himself; isn't that it?

Well, that comes of the introspective literary temperament. It is only the oyster fascinated by the pearl that is killing it."

"You should write some 'Confessions' after the manner of De Quincey,"

said Henry.

"Indeed, I've often thought of it, for there's so much that needs saying on the subject. There is nothing with which we are at once so familiar and of which we know so little. For example"--and now he was quite plainly off again--"for example, the pa.s.sion for, I might say the dream of, drink is usually regarded as a sensual appet.i.te, a physical indulgence. No doubt in its first crude stages it often is so; but soon it becomes something much more strange and abstract. It becomes a mysterious command, issuing we know not whence. It is hardly a desire, and it is not so much a joyless, as a quite colourless, obedience to an imperious necessity, decreed by some unknown will. You might well imagine that I like the taste of this brandy there, as a child is greedily fond of sweetstuff; but it would be quite a mistake. For my own personal taste, there is no drink like a cup of tea; it is the demon, the strange will that has imposed itself upon me, that has a taste for brandy.

"I sometimes wonder whether we poor drunkards are not the victims of disembodied powers of the air who, by some chance, have contracted a craving for earthly liquors, and can only satisfy that craving by fastening themselves upon some unhappy human organism. At times there comes an intermission of the command, as mysterious almost as the command itself. For weeks together we give no thought to our tyrant. We grow gay and young and innocent again. We are free,--so free, we seem to have forgotten that we were ever enslaved. Then suddenly one day we hear the call again. We cry for mercy; we throw ourselves on our knees in prayer. We clutch sacred relics; we conjure the aid of holy memories; we say over to ourselves the names of the dead we have loved: but it is all in vain--surely we are dragged to the feet of that inexorable will, surely we submit ourselves once more to the dark dominion."

Henry listened, fascinated, and a little frightened.

"The longer I live, the more I grow convinced that this is no mere fancy, but actual science," Mr. Gerard continued; "for, again, you might well imagine that one drinks for the dreams or other illusory effects it is said to produce. At first, perhaps, yes; but such effects speedily pa.s.s away, they pa.s.s away indeed before the tyranny has established itself, while it would still be possible to shake it off. No, the dreams of drink are poor things, not worth having at the best. Indeed, there are no dreams worth having, believe me, but those of youth and health and spring-water."

And Mr. Gerard pa.s.sed for awhile in silence into some hidden country of his lost dreams.

Henry gazed at him with a curious wonder. Here was a man evidently of considerable gifts, a man of ideals, of humour, a man witty and gentle, who surely could have easily made his mark in the world, and yet he had thrown all away for a mechanical habit which he himself did not pretend to be a pa.s.sion,--a mere abstract attraction: as though a man should say, "I care not for the joys or successes of this world. My destiny is to sit alone all day and count my fingers and toes, count them over and over and over again. There is not much pleasure in it, and I should be glad to break off the habit,--but there it is. It is imposed upon me by a will stronger than mine which I must obey. It is my destiny."

"Yes, idealists!" said Mr. Gerard, presently coming back from his dreams to his great subject, with a laugh. "That reminds me of a story a business friend of mine told me the other day. A clerk in his office was an incorrigible drunkard. He was quite alone in the world, and had no one dependent upon him. The firm had been lenient to him, and again and again forgiven his outbreaks. But one morning they called him in and said: 'Look here, Jones, we have had a great deal of patience with you; but the time has come when you must choose between the drink and the office.' To their surprise, Jones, instead of eagerly promising reform, looked up gravely, and replied, 'Will you give me a week to think it over, sir? It is a very serious matter.' Drink was all the poor fellow had outside his drudgery; was it to be expected that he should thus lightly sacrifice it?--

"But, to talk about something else, your aunt, Mrs. Tipping, who has a great idea of my literary importance, has a notion that I may be of some help to you, Mr. Mesurier. Well, I'll tell you the whole extent of my present literary engagements, and you are perfectly at liberty to laugh.

At the present time I do the sporting notes for the _Tyrian Daily Mail_, and I write the theological reviews for _The Fleet Street Review_. These apparently incongruous occupations are the relics of an old taste for sport, which as a boy in the country I had ample opportunity for indulging, and of an interrupted training for the Church--'twixt then and now there is an eventful gap which, if you don't mind, we won't sadden each other by filling--Let us fill our gla.s.ses and our pipes instead; and, having failed so entirely myself, I will give you minute directions how to succeed in literature."

Mr. Gerard's discourse on how to succeed in literature was partly practical and partly ironical, and probably too technical to interest the general reader, who has no intention of being a great or a little writer, and who perhaps has already found Mr. Gerard's previous discourse a little too special in its character. Suffice it that Henry heard much to remember, and much to laugh over, and that Mr. Gerard concluded with a practical offer of kindness.

"I don't know how much use it may be to you," he said; "but if you care to have it, I should be very glad to give you a letter to the editor of _The Fleet Street Review_. He has, I think, a certain regard for me, and he might send you a book to do now and again. At all events, it would be something."

Henry embraced the offer gratefully; and it occurred to him that in a day or two's time there was a five days' excursion running from Tyre to London and back, for half-a-guinea. Why not take it, and expend his last five pounds in a stimulating glimpse of the city he some day hoped to conquer? He could then see his friend the publisher, present his letter to the editor, and perhaps bring home with him some little work and a renewed stock of hopes.

So, before they parted that night, Mr. Gerard wrote him the letter.

CHAPTER x.x.xIII

"THIS IS LONDON, THIS IS LIFE"

Thus it was that, all unexpectedly, Henry found himself set down one autumn morning at the homeless hour of a quarter-to-seven, in Euston station. He was going to stay in some street off the Strand, and chartered a hansom to take him there. Few great cities are impressive in the neighbourhood of their railway termini. You enter them, so to speak, by the back door; and London waves no banners of bright welcome to the stranger who first enters it by the Euston Road.

But there was an interesting church presently, and on a dust-cart close by Henry read "Vestry of St. Pancras."

"Can that be the St. Pancras' Church," he said to himself, "where Mary Wollstonecraft lies buried, and Browning was married?"

Then as they drove along through Bloomsbury, the name "Great Coram Street" caught his eye, and he exclaimed with delight: "Why, that's where Thackeray lived for a time!"

Great Coram Street is little accustomed to create such excitement in the breast of the pa.s.ser-by. But to the stranger London is necessarily first a museum, till he begins to love it as a home, and, in addition to dead men's a.s.sociations, begins to people it with memories of his own. When you have lived awhile in Gray's Inn, you grow to forget that Bacon's ghost is your fellow-tenant; and it is the kind-hearted provincial who from time to time lays those flowers on Goldsmith's tomb. When you are caught in a block on Westminster Bridge, with only five minutes to get to Waterloo, you forget to say to yourself: "Ah, this is the bridge on which Wordsworth wrote his famous sonnet." You usually say something quite different.

The mere names of the streets,--how laden with immemorial poetry they were! "Chancery Lane!" How wonderful! Yet the poor wretch standing outside the public-house at the corner seemed to derive small consolation from the fact that he was starving in Chancery Lane.

But to Henry, as yet, London was an extended Westminster Abbey, and every other street was Poet's Corner. He had hardly patience to breakfast, so eager was he to be out in the streets; and while he ate, his eyes were out of the windows all the time, and his ears drinking in all the London morning sounds like music. At the foot of the street ran the Thames; he had caught a thrilling glimpse of it as he stepped from his cab, and had had a childish impulse to rush down to it before entering his hotel.

At last, free of food and baggage, light of heart, and br.i.m.m.i.n.g over with youth, he stepped into the street. It was but little past eight o'clock. He had just heard the hour chimed, in various tones of sweetness and solemnity, from several mellow clocks, evidently hidden high in the air in his near vicinity. For two or three hours there would be no editor or publisher to be seen, and meanwhile he had London to himself. He stepped out into it as into a garden,--a garden of those old-time flowers in which antiquity has become a perfume full of pictures.

Yes, there was the Thames! "Sweet Themmes, run softly till I end my song!" he quoted to himself. Chaucer's, Spenser's, Elizabeth's Thames!

It was a bright morning and the river gleamed to advantage. The tall tower of Westminster glittered richly in the sun, and the long front of Somerset House wore a lordly smile. The embankment gardens sparkled and rustled in morning freshness. Henry drew in the air of London as though it had been a rose. Here was the Thames at the foot of the street, and there at the head was the Strand, a stream of omnibuses and cabs, and city-faring men and women. The Temple must be somewhere close by. Of course it was here to his left. But he would first walk quietly by the Thames side to Westminster, and then come back by the Strand. As he walked, he stepped lightly and gently, as though reverent to the very stones of so sacred a city, and all the time from every prospect and every other street-corner came streaming like strains of music magnetic memories,--"streets with the names of old kings, strong earls, and warrior saints." If for no other reason, how important for the future of a nation is it to preserve in such ancient cities as London and Oxford the energising spectacle of a n.o.ble and strenuous antiquity; for there are no such inspirers of young men as these old places! So much strength and youth went into them long ago that even yet they have strength and youth to give, and from them, as from the strong hills, pours out an inexhaustible potency of bracing influence.

At last Henry found himself back at the top-end of his street. He had walked the Strand with deliberate enjoyment. Fleet Street he still reserved, but, as according to the tower of Clement Danes it was only just ten o'clock, it seemed still a little early to attack his business.

A florist's close by suggested a charming commonplace way of filling the time. He would buy some flowers and carry them to Goldsmith's grave. Why Goldsmith's grave should thus be specially honoured, he a little wondered. He was conscious of loving several writers quite as well. But it was a Johnsonian tradition to love Goldy, and the accessibility of his resting-place made sentiment easy.

He repented this momentary flippancy of thought as he stood in the cloistered corner where Goldsmith sleeps under the eye of the law; and, when he laid his little wreath on the worn stone, it was a genuine offering. From it he turned away to his own personal dreams.

By eleven he had found his friend the publisher, in a dainty little place of business crammed with pottery, Rowlandsons, and books, and more like a curiosity-shop than a publis.h.i.+ng-house, for the publisher proved an enthusiast in everything that was beautiful or curious, and had indeed taken to publis.h.i.+ng from that rare motive in a publisher,--the love of books, rather than the love of money. He was aiming to make his little shop the rallying-point of all the young talent of the day, and as young talent has never too many publishers on the look-out for it, his task was not difficult, though it was one of those real services to literature which such publishers and booksellers have occasionally done in our literary history, with but scant acknowledgment.

Henry was pleased to find that he looked upon him to make one of his little band of youth; and as the publisher understood the art of encouragement, Henry already felt it had been worth while to come to London just to see him. He knew the editor to whom Henry had a letter and volunteered him another. The afternoon would be the best time; meanwhile, they must lunch together. He smiled when Henry suggested the Ches.h.i.+re Cheese. Henry had a sort of vague idea that literary men could hardly think of taking their meals anywhere else. There had been an attempt to bring it into fas.h.i.+on again, the publisher said; but it had come to nothing--though he, for one, loved those old chop-houses, with their tankards, and their sanded floors. So to the Ches.h.i.+re Cheese they repaired, and drank to a long friends.h.i.+p in foaming pewters of porter.

"Alas!" said Henry, "we are fallen on smaller times. Once it was 'the poet's pint of port.' Now we must be content with the poetaster's half-a-pint of porter!"

"You must come to my rooms to-night," said the publisher, "and be introduced to some of our young men. I have one or two of our older critics coming too."

Henry's fortune was evidently made.

He found the editor in a dim back room at the top of a high building, so lost in a world of books and dust that at first Henry could hardly make him out, writing by a window with his back to the door. Then an alert head turned round to him, and a rather peevish gesture bade him be seated, while the editor resumed his work. This hardly came up to Henry's magnificent dreams of the editorial dignity. Perhaps he had a vague idea that editors lived in palaces, and sat on thrones.

Presently the editor put down his pen with an exclamation of satisfaction; and the first impression of peevishness vanished in the cordiality with which he now turned to his visitor.

"You must excuse my absorption. It was a rather tough piece of proof-reading. A subject I'm rather interested in,--new Welsh dictionary. Don't suppose it's in your line, eh, eh?"--and the tall, spare man laughed a boyish laugh like a mischievous bird, and tossed his head at the jest.

His face was small and sallow and tired; but the dark eyes were full of fun and kindness. Presently, he rose and began to walk up and down the room with a curious, prancing walk, rolling himself a cigarette, and talking away in a rapid, jerky fas.h.i.+on with his continual, "eh, eh?"

coming in all the time.

"Poor Gerard! So you know him? How is he now?" and he lowered his voice with the suggestion of a mutual confidence, and stopped in his walk till Henry should answer. "Poor Gerard! And he might have been--well, well,--never mind. We were together at King's. Brilliant fellow. So you know Gerard. Dear me! Dear me!"

Then he turned to the subject of Henry's visit.

"Well, my poor boy, nothing will satisfy you but literature? You are determined to be a literary man, eh, eh?" Then he stopped in front of Henry and laid his hand kindly on his shoulder, "Is it too late to say, 'Go back while there is yet time'? Perhaps--of course--you're going to be a very great man," and he broke off into his walk again, with one of his mischievous laughs. "But unless you are, take my word, it's a poor game--Yet, I suppose, it's no use talking. I know, wasted breath, wasted breath--Well, now, what can you do? and, by the way, you won't grow fat on _The Fleet Street Review_. Ten s.h.i.+llings a column is our magnificent rate of payment, and we can hardly afford that--"

Then he began pulling out one book and another from the piles of all sorts that lay around him. "I suppose, like the rest, you'd better begin on poetry. There's a tableful over there--go and take your pick of it, unless, of course, you've got some special subject. You're not, I suppose, an authority on a.s.syriology, eh, eh?"

Henry feared not, and then a new fit of industry came upon the editor, and he begged Henry to take a look at the books while he ran through another proof for the post.