Jimmy Quixote: A Novel

by Tom Gallon

For the most part in the evenings he wandered about the streets—staring into shop windows, and lingering about outside theatres, and generally touching the mere fringe of the great life that was pulsing all about him. But when some twelve months had gone by, the coming of younger lads than himself to the boarding-house as well as to the warehouse sent him a step up in each place; so that at the boarding-house he had a tiny room at the very top of the house to himself—a mere cupboard, but still a room in his eyes; while at the warehouse he somehow got to a desk whereat he wore his coat, and left the parcels behind. And in so doing gained a little money for himself in addition to the meagre pocket-money he had had.

That room at the top of the house became in a very big sense the boy's home. It was something to return to; something to know, in the stress and worry of the day, was waiting for him, even though he might occupy it for but a few hours at the most. And no sooner had he got that room than he set about, in quite an imitative fashion, to do what others had done before him. An imitative fashion, because he had lighted by accident upon what was to him a wonderful romance; the story of a boy as poor as he was, and working as hard as he worked, who had gathered books about him, and made of himself a great and celebrated man.

Jimmy being a mere creature of impulse, and in a desperate hurry always to do whatever his mind happened to light upon—until something else attracted his attention—began setting about the great and celebrated business without delay. He bought books—a few at a time, and quite unsuited to his purpose—and fell asleep over them with great regularity in the room upstairs for a week or two. They taught him something—stirred that brain that had not been stirred by anything beyond figures for a long time; made him think for himself. For, save that grounding in elementary things given by the Rev. Temple Purdue, and a deeper grounding in classical matters the importance of which he had not grasped, Jimmy was profoundly ignorant. For the first time he began to remember something of the romantic side of life, as told him years before by Old Paul; for the first time began to apply that half-forgotten knowledge to his own purposes. Two years from the time Jimmy had landed in London, when he was coming near to his twentieth year, he began sheepishly and with a locked door to write. By that time the books covered two long shelves, and were in every state of binding imaginable, and in every condition of repair.

Is it necessary to state that he began with verse? Finding most unaccountably a line singing in his head for the greater part of one day, he went home, and set that line down at the top of a fair sheet of paper, and added another; afterwards erasing the second as being unworthy of the first. Stumblingly, he went at the thing again; felt that the first line was not after all what it might be, and, moreover, that it was difficult to fit with a rhyme; therefore he began again.

Poor Jimmy! His beginnings were about all there were of him for a time; and he spoilt much paper. But by that time the subtle craze of it had eaten into his very life, and the warehouse was a mere necessary thing by which he must live, but which did not really concern him in the least. After a time the verses failed to concern him also; he determined to return to them at a later period—much as Mr. Thomas Hardy had done, after making himself famous in another direction; also there was Mr. George Meredith to be thought of, and remembered with satisfaction. In other words, Jimmy tackled prose—as being easier.

The writing seemed at first the smallest part of it all; it was the sending of the stuff about. Bulky packages came back to the boarding-house, with the names of various papers and magazines stamped aggressively on the covers; and, of course, created comment. Jimmy bore it with a burning face, and tried to call to mind other persecutions endured by the elect of the earth under similar conditions; the stories of sons who had been thrashed by commonplace fathers upon showing marked literary, artistic, or musical ability afforded him keen satisfaction. Obviously he was on the right road, although no thrashings in the actual sense were his.

But there came a day—I should rather have written a day of days—when a letter arrived from a paper—a packet far too small to contain the bulky thing that had been sent. Opening it, Jimmy discovered that a certain wonderful being desired to see him; tremblingly, Jimmy sought the office in his dinner-hour, and inquired for the editor. A small boy with no reverence about him—no lowering of the voice in speaking of so great a personage—took his name up; and presently Jimmy stood in the presence, with his knees knocking together, and a curious dryness in his throat.

The editor was a youngish man of a slim appearance and with flaxen hair. He was seated at an untidy desk, with his coat off, and with a pipe that was cold in his mouth. The room appeared to be decorated for the most part with photographs, chiefly of ladies. Photographs large and small—Continental photographs and English; photographs in costume, and photographs in but little costume at all. Paper clippings were all over the floor; and at the opposite side of the desk a pale boy in spectacles was at work upon a drawing that seemed to the unpractised glance of Jimmy already completed.

The man looked up at him, scanning him narrowly, and nodded towards a chair. "Well, Mr. Larrance," he said, "and what can we do for you?"

Jimmy thought it was rather the other way about, in the sense that he was desirous of knowing what he could do for the editor; but he smiled feebly, and murmured something about a letter he had received. The man was silent for a moment or two, as though debating what to say; finally he looked up, screwing his eyes shrewdly, and spoke.