Here I would find my windows closed for the night, the blinds drawn for the sake of decency, a jug of hot water standing in my basin, while a hot-water bottle would be within the bed. All would be in readiness, therefore, for my quick disrobing, a process that I would begin as soon as I had locked the door; and within five minutes, I would be bending over the basin clad as I have described myself some fifteen hours earlier. I would then brush my teeth, using some mild disinfectant, open my nightgown bag and extract my nightgown, and having taken off my vest, would slip on my nightgown prior to the removal of my lower garments. These I would then detach from myself with a single downward movement, subsequently hanging them over the end of the bed, after which I would put on my dressing-gown and bedroom slippers and utter a brief but fervent supplication. I would then pull up the blinds so that the stars could shine upon my bed, swallow a tablespoonful of the Adult Gripe Water, unlock the door, extinguish the light, and by ten thirty-five be composed for slumber.
Such was a typical day of this period of my life, during which, as I have said, I increased in weight, and in which, as I am glad to believe, my moral stature also expanded and became consolidated. This was at any rate the conviction of my friend Simeon Whey, who took the opportunity of my twenty-sixth birthday to describe me in his diary as ‘now in the full flower of his southern metropolitan Xtian manhood.’ Indeed the whole passage is well worth transcribing, written as it was on the eve of his ordination, and following a happy hour together discussing the price lists of various clerical tailors.
‘By a moving coincidence,’ he wrote, ‘the eve of my ordination has coincided with the twenty-sixth birthday of my old and dear friend Augustus Carp of Angela Gardens. And yet perhaps old is scarcely the right word, for mature as he is, he is now in the full flower of his southern metropolitan Xtian manhood. Nor have I ever seen him looking so large as when he came to see me at 2.35 to receive the hand-painted tooth-brush, with which I had promised to present him, and to give me his benediction for the morrow. Fully a stone heavier than this time last year, his moustache has become noticeably more abundant, and his every movement possesses the weight and gravity of a man twenty years his senior. Admirable as was his diction, too, even as a boy, it has now attained a level of sonorous grandeur, from which it never lapses in even the most trivial pronouncements imposed upon him by necessary human intercourse. Is it surprising, therefore, that I daily thank P,[[12]] for so noble and inspiring an example?’
[12]. Providence.
The Rev Simeon Whey from a photograph in my possession
Dear Simeon, loyal and appreciative, for many a long year hadst thou been trying to get ordained, but now thou hadst succeeded, and well do I remember thy first sermon at St. Sepulchre’s, Balham. Cast thy bread, thou preachedst, upon the waters, for thou shalt find it after many days—and mark, thou didst say, it is not demanded of us to cast our jewels or financial securities. No, no, thou saidst, it was well recognized that the former would sink and the latter become unintelligible, whereas bread was nutriment for the fishes of the deep, and in due course would return to our tables. Moreover bread was cheap, thou didst say, and even the poorest of us was sometimes tempted to waste his bread, and for him there was a message—kck—in these beautiful words to place his bread, as it were, out at interest. Let us all then take heed, thou saidst, never to waste our bread but to collect it earnestly with both hands, and whenever we saw any water, yea no matter how little, to cast it upon it in faith fearing not. And then it would return to us, if not in the form of fish, then in some other form which we wotted not of. For what was bred in the bone could never be cast down, nay, not until seventy times seven.
Good Simeon, such was thy first sermon, and I doubt if thou hast ever preached a better.
Little as we dreamt it, however, Providence was now hurrying towards me with the heaviest cross of my adult life, a cross so heavy that even now I cannot help shuddering at its weight, and one that compelled me not only to retire from business but to remove from Camberwell to Stoke Newington. Nor was it less bitter in that the instrument of deposit was a young and exceptionally attractive female, with whom I had been brought into contact in the course of my work for the Anti-Dramatic and Saltatory Union.
This was about a year after Simeon’s ordination and soon after I had inaugurated, in my capacity as Vice-President, an intensive campaign of personal exhortation at all the most notorious West End theatres. Thus I had arranged that there should be posted at the stage entrances of all these more popular haunts of vice earnest young workers of the male sex plentifully provided with the Union’s literature. These would then approach the in-coming actors and actresses with a few well-chosen words of warning, pointing out to them the iniquity of their occupation and inviting them to embrace some other profession. Having had our evening meals, Ezekiel and myself would each then visit a group of theatres to encourage our representatives and lend them the personal aid of our riper experience and more gifted oratory.