217 COVENT GARDEN, W.C.
January 6th.
Dear Sir,
I have looked at the poems you were kind enough to send for my consideration, and I shall be happy to hand them to a reader for his opinion. The reader's fee is one guinea. Should his opinion be favourable, I shall be glad to discuss terms with you.
Yours faithfully,
William Worrall.
Guy threw the letter down in a rage. He would almost have preferred a flat refusal to this request for money to enable some jaded hack to read his poems. The proposal appeared merely insolent, and he wrote curtly to Mr. William Worrall to demand the immediate return of his manuscript. But after all, if Worrall did not accept his work, who would? Money was an ulterior consideration when the great object was to receive such unanimous approval as would justify the apparent waste of time in which he had been indulging. The moment his father acknowledged the right he had to be confident, he in turn would try to show by following his father's advice that he was not the wrong-headed idler of his reputation. Perhaps he would send the guinea to Worrall. He tore up his first letter and wrote another in which a cheque was enclosed. Then he began to add up the counterfoils of his cheque book, a depressing operation that displayed an imminent financial crisis. He had overdrawn £5 last quarter. That left £32 10s. of the money paid in on December 21. The quarter's rent was £4 10s. That left £28. Miss Peasey's wages were in arrears, and he must pay her £4 10s. on the fifteenth of this month. That would leave £23 10s. and he must knock off 7s. 6d. for Bob's licence. About £3 had gone at Christmas and there were the books still to pay. £20 was not much for current expenses until next Lady Day. However, he decided that he could manage in Wychford, if he did not have to pay out money for Oxford debts, the creditors of which were pressing him harder each week.
| £ | s. | d. | ||
| Lampard. | Books. | 39 | 15 | 0 |
| Harker. | Furniture. | 17 | 18 | 0 |
| Faucett. | Books. | 22 | 16 | 6 |
| Williamson. | Books. | 13 | 19 | 0 |
| Ambrose. | Books. | 4 | 7 | 0 |
| Brough. | Tobacco. | 9 | 19 | 0 |
| Clary. | Clothes. | 44 | 4 | 0 |
| Miscellaneous. | Books, Clothes, | |||
| Stationery, Chemist, etc., etc. about £50 | ||||
A total of £202 18s. 6d. Practically he might say that £200 would clear everything. Yet was £50 enough to allow for those miscellaneous accounts? Here for instance was a bill of £11 for boots and another of £14 for hats apparently, though how the deuce he could have spent all that on hats he did not know. It would be wiser to say that £250 was required to free himself from debt. Guy read through the tradesmen's letters and detected an universal impatience, for they all reminded him that not merely for fifteen months had they received nothing on account of large outstanding bills, but also they made it clear that behind reiterated demands and politeness strained to breaking-point stood darkly the law. That brute Ambrose, to whom after all he only owed £4 7s., was the most threatening. In fact he would obviously have to pay the ruffian in full. That left only £15 13s. for current expenses to Lady Day, or rather £14 12s., for by the way Worrall's guinea had been left out of the reckoning.
Guy wondered if he ought to get rid of Miss Peasey and manage for himself in future. Yet the housekeeper probably earned her wages by what she saved him, and if he relied on a woman who 'came in' every morning, that meant feeding a family. It would be better to sell a few books. He might raise £50 that way. Ten pounds to both Lampard and Clary, and six fivers among the rest would postpone any violent pressure for a while. Guy at once began to choose the books with which he could most easily part. It was difficult to put aside as many as might be expected to raise £50, for his collection did not contain rarities, and it would be a sheer quantity of volumes, the extraction of which would horribly deplete his shelves, upon which he must rely.
The January rain dripped monotonously on the window-sills, while Guy dragged book after book from the shelves that for only fifteen months had known their company. They were a melancholy sight, when he had stacked on the floor as many books as he could bear to lose, each shelf looking as disreputable as a row of teeth after a fight. A hundred volumes were gone, scarcely a dozen of which had he sacrificed without a pang. But a hundred volumes in order to raise £50 must sell at an average of ten shillings apiece, and in the light of such a test of value he regarded dismayfully the victims. Precious though they were to him, he could not fairly estimate the price they would fetch at more than five shillings each. That meant the loss of at least a hundred more books. Guy felt sick at the prospect and looked miserably along the rows for the farther tribute of martyrs they must be forced to yield. With intense difficulty he gathered together another fifty, and then with a final effort came again for still another fifty. Here was the first edition of Swinburne's Essays and Studies. That must go, for it might count as ten shillings and therefore save a weaker brother. Rossetti's Poems in this edition of 1871 must go in order to save the complete works, for he could copy out the sonnet which was not reprinted in the later edition. Here was Payne's translation of Villon which could certainly go, for it would fetch at least fifteen shillings, and he still possessed that tattered little French edition at two francs. The collected Verlaine might as well go, and the Mallarmé with the Rops frontispiece: the six volumes would save others better loved. Besides, he was sick of French poetry, wretched stuff most of it. Yet, here was Hérédia and the Pleiad and de Vigny, all of whom were beloved exceptions. He must preserve too the Italians, (what a solace Leopardi had been), though here were a couple of Infernos, one of which could surely be sacrificed. He opened the first:
Amor, che a nullo amato amar perdona,
Mi prese del costui piacer si forte,
Che, come vedi, ancor non m'abbandona.