how I could have lived, and sometimes have enjoyed life, with such
a burden of duns as I endured. Sheriff's officers with uncanny
documents, of which I never understood anything, were common
attendants on me. And yet I do not remember that I was ever locked
up, though I think I was twice a prisoner. In such emergencies some
one paid for me. And now, looking back at it, I have to ask myself
whether my youth was very wicked. I did no good in it; but was there
fair ground for expecting good from me? When I reached London no
mode of life was prepared for me,--no advice even given to me. I
went into lodgings, and then had to dispose of my time. I belonged
to no club, and knew very few friends who would receive me into
their houses. In such a condition of life a young man should no
doubt go home after his work, and spend the long hours of the evening
in reading good books and drinking tea. A lad brought up by strict
parents, and without having had even a view of gayer things, might
perhaps do so. I had passed all my life at public schools, where I
had seen gay things, but had never enjoyed them. Towards the good
books and tea no training had been given me. There was no house in
which I could habitually see a lady's face and hear a lady's voice.
No allurement to decent respectability came in my way. It seems to
me that in such circumstances the temptations of loose life will
almost certainly prevail with a young man. Of course if the mind be
strong enough, and the general stuff knitted together of sufficiently
stern material, the temptations will not prevail. But such minds
and such material are, I think, uncommon. The temptation at any
rate prevailed with me.
I wonder how many young men fall utterly to pieces from being turned
loose into London after the same fashion. Mine was, I think, of
all phases of such life the most dangerous. The lad who is sent
to mechanical work has longer hours, during which he is kept from
danger, and has not generally been taught in his boyhood to anticipate
pleasure. He looks for hard work and grinding circumstances.
I certainly had enjoyed but little pleasure, but I had been among
those who did enjoy it and were taught to expect it. And I had
filled my mind with the ideas of such joys.
And now, except during official hours, I was entirely without
control,--without the influences of any decent household around me.
I have said something of the comedy of such life, but it certainly
had its tragic aspect. Turning it all over in my own mind, as I
have constantly done in after years, the tragedy has always been
uppermost. And so it was as the time was passing. Could there be
any escape from such dirt? I would ask myself; and I always answered
that there was no escape. The mode of life was itself wretched. I
hated the office. I hated my work. More than all I hated my idleness.
I had often told myself since I left school that the only career in
life within my reach was that of an author, and the only mode of
authorship open to me that of a writer of novels. In the journal which
I read and destroyed a few years since, I found the matter argued
out before I had been in the Post Office two years. Parliament was
out of the question. I had not means to go to the Bar. In Official
life, such as that to which I had been introduced, there did not
seem to be any opening for real success. Pens and paper I could
command. Poetry I did not believe to be within my grasp. The drama,
too, which I would fain have chosen, I believed to be above me. For
history, biography, or essay writing I had not sufficient erudition.
But I thought it possible that I might write a novel. I had resolved
very early that in that shape must the attempt be made. But the
months and years ran on, and no attempt was made. And yet no day was
passed without thoughts of attempting, and a mental acknowledgment
of the disgrace of postponing it. What reader will not understand
the agony of remorse produced by such a condition of mind?
The gentleman from Mecklenburgh Square was always with me in the
morning,--always angering me by his hateful presence,--but when the
evening came I could make no struggle towards getting rid of him.
In those days I read a little, and did learn to read French and
Latin. I made myself familiar with Horace, and became acquainted with
the works of our own greatest poets. I had my strong enthusiasms,
and remember throwing out of the window in Northumberland Street,
where I lived, a volume of Johnson's Lives of the Poets, because
he spoke sneeringly of Lycidas. That was Northumberland Street by
the Marylebone Workhouse, on to the back-door of which establishment
my room looked out--a most dreary abode, at which I fancy I must
have almost ruined the good-natured lodging-house keeper by my
constant inability to pay her what I owed.
How I got my daily bread I can hardly remember. But I do remember
that I was often unable to get myself a dinner. Young men generally
now have their meals provided for them. I kept house, as it were.
Every day I had to find myself with the day's food. For my breakfast
I could get some credit at the lodgings, though that credit would
frequently come to an end. But for all that I had often breakfast
to pay day by day; and at your eating-house credit is not given. I
had no friends on whom I could sponge regularly. Out on the Fulham
Road I had an uncle, but his house was four miles from the Post
Office, and almost as far from my own lodgings. Then came borrowings
of money, sometimes absolute want, and almost constant misery.
Before I tell how it came about that I left this wretched life,
I must say a word or two of the friendships which lessened its
misfortunes. My earliest friend in life was John Merivale, with whom
I had been at school at Sunbury and Harrow, and who was a nephew
of my tutor, Harry Drury. Herman Merivale, who afterwards became my
friend, was his brother, as is also Charles Merivale, the historian
and Dean of Ely. I knew John when I was ten years old, and am happy
to be able to say that he is going to dine with me one day this
week. I hope I may not injure his character by stating that in those
days I lived very much with him. He, too, was impecunious, but he
had a home in London, and knew but little of the sort of penury
which I endured. For more than fifty years he and I have been close
friends. And then there was one W---- A----, whose misfortunes in
life will not permit me to give his full name, but whom I dearly
loved. He had been at Winchester and at Oxford, and at both places
had fallen into trouble. He then became a schoolmaster,--or perhaps
I had better say usher,--and finally he took orders. But he was
unfortunate in all things, and died some years ago in poverty. He
was most perverse; bashful to very fear of a lady's dress; unable
to restrain himself in anything, but yet with a conscience that
was always stinging him; a loving friend, though very quarrelsome;
and, perhaps, of all men I have known, the most humorous. And he
was entirely unconscious of his own humour. He did not know that
he could so handle all matters as to create infinite amusement out
of them. Poor W---- A----! To him there came no happy turning-point
at which life loomed seriously on him, and then became prosperous.
W---- A----, Merivale, and I formed a little club, which we called