"No, no," I assured him. "I'll go up and you need never even have seen me." I went out of the shop at once, and up the stairs at the side.
When I got to the second floor I knocked: no answer; a minute or two later I knocked again, and loudly. "Come in!" I heard and in I went. There was a big man seated at a table with his back to me, immersed in some proofs; he was evidently very near-sighted, because his nose was almost touching the manuscripts. I stood a few moments by his left side, quietly taking stock of the room with its bookcases opposite to me, then I coughed loudly. The big man dropped his glasses on the table and turned to me at once, evidently surprised out of politeness.
"Goodness gracious!" he exclaimed, "who are you? How did you come in?"
"My name won't help you much, Mr. Hutton," I replied, smiling, "and I don't want to bother you. I want work, think I can write-"
"We have too many writers," he ejaculated. "Can't find work enough for those we know."
"There's always room at the top," I countered. "Suppose I can do better than any you've got; it'll be to your interest to use me."
"Goodness me!" he exclaimed. "Do you think you can write better than any of us?"
"No, no," I corrected, "but there are some subjects I know better than any Englishman. You're a judge: the first ten lines of an article by me will tell you whether I am merely diseased with conceit or whether I'm really worth using."
"That's true," he said, getting up and going over to the bookcase, "Do you know anything about Russia?"
"I was with General Skobelef at Plevna."
"Goodness me!" he ejaculated again. "Here's a book on Russia and the war that may interest you," and he handed me a volume.
"Have you any special knowledge of the United States?" he went on, still peering at the books.
"I've been through a western university," I replied, "am a member of the American bar, have practiced law."
"Really?" he cried. "Well, here's a book of Freeman on America that may amuse you. Don't be afraid of telling the truth about it," he went on. "If you disagree with him, say so!"
"Thanks ever so much," I replied. "I'm greatly obliged to you. The chance to show what I can do is all I want," and I went out at once, but not before I had caught a kindly glint in the peering eyes, which showed me that Richard Holt Hutton was really a gentleman who put on a hard abruptness of manner to mask or perhaps to protect his real sweetness of nature.
When I got downstairs I showed the clerk the books as a proof he would not be blamed, and I took pains to thank him again before I rejoined Cluer.
When Cluer saw the books and heard that I had talked with Hutton, he exclaimed, "I don't know how you managed it. I won a first class at Oxford and wrote to him, but could not even see him. How did you manage?"
Under a promise of secrecy I told him, and then we talked of the books and what I'd write, but I didn't go straight home and begin the job at once, as Cluer advised.
First of all I sat down and thought. Many days had passed since I returned to London and I had had as yet no hint of success, saw in fact no gleam even of hope. What was I to do? I must win soon!
It struck me almost at once that I ought to know the mark I was aiming at. To win R. H. Hutton, I must know him first; accordingly, next morning I went to the British Museum and asked for all his books. I got a dozen or more ponderous tomes and spent the next two days reading them. At the end of that time I saw the soul of R. H. Hutton before me as a very small entity, a gentle-pious spirit, intensely religious. "He will enjoy a slating of Freeman," I said to myself, "for he knows Freeman to be rude, cocksure and aggressive. I'll give Hutton just what he wants."
I went home and wrote the best stuff I could write on the Russian book, and then, after reading Freeman with great care and finding that indeed he was the very type of an arrogant, pompous pedant who mistook learning for wisdom, I let myself go and wrote an honest but contemptuous review of his book; indeed, there was nothing in it for the soul. I ended my review with the remark that "as Malebranche saw all things in God, so Mr. Freeman sees all things in the stout, broad-bottomed, aggressive Teuton."
I had made another friend in my first week in London who was now to stand me in good stead, the Reverend John Verschoyle, then a curate at Marylebone Church. I don't remember how I met him; but I soon discovered in him one of the most extraordinary literary talents of the time; in especial a gift for poetry almost comparable to that of Swinburne.
Verschoyle was of good family and had migrated from Trinity College, Dublin to Cambridge, where at seventeen he had written the Greek verses for the year book issued by the university; his English verse, too, seemed to me miraculous-a lyric gift of the highest. Though only an inch or so taller than I was, he was fifty inches round the chest and prodigiously strong. I called him a line battle-ship cut down to a frigate. He was handsome, too, with a high forehead, good features and long, golden moustache. Of all the men I met in my life, the one that most people would have selected as likely to do great things, at least in literature; yet he brought it to nothing and died untimely in middle-age.
He happened to call on me just when I had finished my two reviews and naturally I gave him them to read. He knew Hutton's works. "A high churchman," he called him, "who admires Newman prodigiously." At once he declared that Hutton would certainly take the article on Russia; it was so new that Russia should show signs of a revolutionary spirit, was so unexpected, and so forth.
"I wanted your criticism," I insisted. "Please point out any faults: I'm more at home in German than in English."
He smiled: "Here's a sentence that proves that, I think, and there's another."
Soon we were at it hammer and tongs, but he quickly convinced me that my half-doubt was amply justified. After he had gone through the two articles, I had had the best lesson in English I ever got. From that day on for five years the Bible and Swift never left my bedside, and in those years I never opened a German book, not even my beloved Heine or Schopenhauer. It had taken me years to learn German, but it took me twice as long to cleanse my brain of every trace of the tongue. No writer should ever try to master two languages.
I wrote or rewrote the little essays and then sent them off to Hutton.
The next day I was back at my post at Chapman's, and when I told Chapman that I was on the Spectator he laughed and said he was delighted; and a day or two later he called me in and gave me a couple of books he wanted my opinion on. "Meredith is our reader," he said; "but it takes him weeks often to give an opinion and I'd like to know about these books as soon as possible."
My chance had come. I thanked him, went straight home and sat down at once to read and re-read the books. They took me all day and I spent the best part of the night writing my opinion of them. Next morning I went round to Verschoyle with them, who told me the reviews were all right, showed indeed remarkable improvement in my English. "The short sentences strike the right note," he remarked, "but you mustn't let them become stereotyped; you must vary them very often."
I thanked him and took the reviews to Chapman. He was greatly impressed.
"I thought you'd keep 'em a week," he said. "I had no wish to hurry you so."
"It's nothing," I replied, "but the one book you could publish with some changes; the other is puerile."
"I agree with you," he said, "and if you take this to the cashier downstairs, he'll give you the two guineas for your opinion."
"No, no," I exclaimed. "I'm heavily in your debt for letting me bother you as I've done. Please use me whenever you can; I'll be only too glad to be of any service." Chapman smiled at me most cordially and from that day on gave me books every week, and asked me my opinion on this or that literary matter almost every day. He must have praised me to Escott too, for one afternoon Escott asked me up to the Fortnightly office and gave me a German article he wanted me to read and write an opinion on.