Grey stepped within the threshold, and looked about him with curious eyes. The house they had entered a few minutes before was a tall and narrow one in Harpe Alley, leading from Shoe Lane. It was not an old house, for it came within the area of the great fire of fifty years back, and had been rebuilt, like the whole of the surrounding buildings, with greater speed than discretion. Grey had once come across Sir Christopher Wren in his other life, and had talked with him of the short-sighted policy observed in the rebuilding of the city. The great architect declared that had his plans been carried out, London would have been the finest city in the world: but the haste and false economy of the citizens and city companies had thwarted his plans, and the old lines of narrow and crooked streets were kept as before, to the cost of succeeding generations.
This house had been hastily run up, like those surrounding it, and the tempest from without rattled and shook the walls and windows as though to drive them in. But the room itself, though no more than an attic, bore an air of comfort very pleasant to the eyes of the homeless Grey, whose own quarters only contained the barest necessities of life; for there were some rough shelves full of books in one corner, and a rug before the fire gave a look of comfort to the place. Two armchairs of rude pattern, but furnished with down cushions, seemed to invite repose; and everything was scrupulously clean, even to the boards of the floor.
"'A poor thing, but mine own,'" spoke the Old Lion, with his grim smile, as he motioned to Grey to take one chair, and he himself pulled up the other. "I have dwelt here two years and more now, and I have not been unhappy; albeit I never thought to end my days in a garret, as belike I shall do now."
"Fortune has been hard upon you," spoke Grey earnestly. "You have the gifts and the powers; it is cruel that your limbs should have become crippled."
"We must take the rough and the smooth of life as we find it," answered the other. "I have had my moments of rebellion—I have them still; but I seek the consolations of philosophy; and I have never yet wanted for bread or shelter. But there be times when the future looks dark before me. Those who remember me, and pity my misfortunes, drop away one by one. I lacked not for patrons at the first. When I could not longer tread the boards, I was ofttimes engaged to make men laugh or weep at some gay rout at a nobleman's house. Then, too, my jests and quips were in request at gay supper-parties, and I was paid to set the table in a roar, which in all sooth was not difficult when the wine-bottle was going round and round. Oh, I knew gay times for many a year after my stage career closed. But patrons have died off one by one. I am more crippled than I was, and the young wits are pushing to the front, whilst the Old Lion has been crowded out. My pen still serves me in a measure. I can turn an epigram, or write a couplet, or even make shift to pen a sonnet that lacks not the true ring. Grist yet comes to the mill, but more and more slowly. There come moments when I wonder what will be the end of the Old Lion's career—the poorhouse, or a death by slow starvation in some garret!"
"No, no," cried Grey almost fiercely; "that would be shame indeed. Surely, if nothing better turn up, there must be places of refuge for fallen genius. Have not almshouses been built, again and again, by the well-disposed for such men as sickness has laid aside? You smile, but in sooth it is so."
"Ay, and how many are there to claim the benefits of pious founders? Yet no matter. I brought you not here to talk of my troubles, but of yours. That romance of which you speak—"
"It would seem the world cares little for such things. I did hear the same tale everywhere. Was it a pamphlet I had to give them, a lampoon upon some great man, an attack against the Tories, the Whigs, the Dissenters? If so, they would read it; for there was great eagerness amongst the people to read such things, and no matter what side was attacked, there were hundreds eager to buy and to read. But a romance—no; that was a mistake altogether. A writer of successful pamphlets might perhaps find readers for a merry tale, or even a romance; but for an unknown aspirant to fame—no, that was another matter. No one would buy it; no one would even read it; though there were one or two who took it and glanced through some pages, praised the style and the easy flow of words, and advised me to take to pamphleteering, promising that they would read anything like that."
"That is it, that is it!" cried the Old Lion, rising and pacing up and down the room with his halting stride. "Write a filthy lampoon, a scurrilous libel, a fiery diatribe against any great or notable man, and all the world will read and set themselves agog to know the writer. Look at Swift, with his 'Tale of a Tub;' look at De Foe, with his crowd of pamphlets—men of talent, I do not doubt or deny, but full of gall and bitterness. Yet they are read by all the world. Fame, if not fortune, has come to them, and fortune will doubtless follow. The late King, they say, would have made Swift a bishop. The Queen will not: his ribald wit disgusts her; but he has admirers and patrons everywhere. It is the bold and unscrupulous who flourish like the grass of the field. True poetry and literary beauty are not asked, or even desired. A pen dipped in gall is a pen dipped in gold in these days of party strife. And the genius that wields not this bitter pen sits in dust and ashes, asking bread, and that well-nigh in vain."
"How should I write these party diatribes—I who know little of their cries? Whig or Tory, Tory or Whig—what care I? The Tory of one Parliament is the Whig of the next. Have not Lords Marlborough and Godolphin gone over to the Whigs? The Queen herself, they say, is changing slowly."