With ample time to spare, I strolled up to the huge pile of buildings at the back of the Law Courts, which I in common with many happier Londoners had never known the use of until then. Indeed they had not long been finished and the approach to them, across what some of the newspapers ironically called at that time Strand Common, was quite appropriately depressing. It had that effect upon me at anyrate, added to all that horror of the unknown which is so natural to imaginative people and withal so unjustifiable in nine cases out of ten. Being full early I sat down on one of the benches which even then were provided by some thoughtful souls for the use of weary jetsam from the roaring tide of the Strand or Fleet Street, and endeavoured to concentrate my thoughts upon the approaching ordeal. It was a hopeless failure, as any attempts at meditation have always been with me. My thoughts will only flow under the stimulus of speech or pen action, in silence and alone they are uncontrollable, and range fruitlessly over the whole field of my experience.
But, behold, to me came sudden and grateful relief in the person of an old patron of mine who held some snug billet as an official reporter at the Law Courts facing us. Having an hour to spare, he had come there to smoke a contemplative pipe and enjoy the unwonted rest from recording in wiggly hieroglyphics the mass of banalities, lies, and legalities which it was his business to perpetuate in print. He was an enthusiast in photography—indeed, it was his only hobby—and at the very slightest sign that I was attending to what he said, he launched forth into a flood of talk about lenses and exposures, and focussing and developing, about all of which I knew rather less than I did of cuneiform inscriptions. But he was so pleased, and my face expressed so much interest (which I swear I could not feel), that he babbled on for the hour he had to spare.
Then suddenly he said, "But what are you doing here?" I replied casually as if it was an ordinary occurrence with me, "Oh, I'm waiting to file my petition in Bankruptcy as soon as it's eleven o'clock." "Indeed," he answered, "well, you needn't be in a hurry, you won't find anybody in there that is. Good morning," and he left me.
True my histrionic qualities are few, but I know that I did try and impart a pathetic break to my voice when I spoke of my errand, to infuse it with a pathos which I did not feel, for I had no idea of what was before me. I know also that he did not take the slightest notice of my tone, and treated it as one of the commonest of human experiences, one not deserving of even a passing thought. I know too that this vulgar indifference of his hurt me more than any words of whatever kind could have done. By it I knew that I was now enrolled among the ranks of the great army who live by their wits, who make a business of living upon other people, who are as much the parasites of society as the bookmaker or the bucket-shopkeeper, although not nearly so prosperous. No one would give me any credit, I knew, for the almost superhuman struggles I had made to pay my way, and to justify my right to live and maintain my wife and family. I, who had literally starved myself and worked myself into collapse in order to practice all the week what I preached on Sundays in the open air, was now to be classed with those whom I had so often denounced.
Perhaps it served me right for denouncing anybody. But it is hard when one feels deeply to refrain from speech. Yet I suppose it would be safe to say that we never know what we might become if we fell victims to the folie des grandeurs, combined with that far more common complaint, the accursed thirst for gold, no matter whose.
CHAPTER XV LEGAL EXPERIENCES
Standing, as I am now (as far as my story is concerned), on the threshold of the Bankruptcy Court, I wish to disavow the idea of having any quarrel with individuals, or, of any personal bias. One of the main objects I have had before me in writing this book has been to record simply and without hyperbole my own experiences in connection with this great national Institution. If, in the course of my remarks, I say anything which is not strictly warranted by the facts, I declare that it is not intentional. I only say that which personal observation and experience leads me to believe is strictly true. Also, be it noted, I write from the point of the view of the amateur—I have not had the benefit in one sense of an association with any of those able financiers who have been bankrupt several times, and then have retired to enjoy in a peaceful retirement the fruits of their labours.