Something more than a year ago two such young people came up from the country, and found shelter in a London lodging-house, where they could work and study until success should arrive. They were boy and girl, brother and sister—twins. They had very little money, and could afford no more than one sitting-room. Therefore, one worked in the sitting-room and the other in a bedroom, because their occupations demanded solitude. The one in the sitting-room was the girl. She was engaged in the pursuit of poetry: she made verses continually, every day. Unless she was reading verse, she was either making, or polishing, or devising verses. Of all pursuits in the world this is at once the most absorbing and the most delightful. It is also, with the greater part of these who follow it, the most useless. Thomas the Rhymer sits down and takes his pen: it is nine of the clock. He considers: he writes: he scratches out: he writes again: he corrects again: after ten minutes or so, he looks up. It is three in the afternoon: the luncheon hour is past: the morning is gone: all he has to show for the six golden hours, when an account of them is demanded, will be a single stanza of a ballade. And perhaps not a single editor will look at it. To Effie Wilmot, the girl-twin, thus engaged morning after morning, the hours become moments and the days minutes. The result and outcome of her labours you have already learned. But she was young, and she lived in hope. A few more weeks, and the great man, her patron, would have satisfied that whim of wishing to be thought a poet of society. Strange that one who painted pictures of such wonderful beauty, who wrote such charming stories in such endless variety—stories quaint and bizarre, stories pathetic, stories humorous—should so condescend! What could a few simple verses—such as hers—do to increase his fame? However, that was nearly over. She felt quite happy and light-hearted: as happy as if, like other poets, she was writing things that would appear with her own name: she pursued the light and airy fancies of her brain, capturing one or two, chaining them in the prison of her rhymes, which, of course, were set to the old-new tunes affected by the little poets of the day. If they have got no message to deliver, they can at least come on the stage and repeat over again the old things clad in dress revived. We can keep on dressing up in the poet's habit until the poet himself shall come along.
Effie worked on, sitting at the window. Poets can work anywhere, though, of course, they ought to sit habitually on the sides of hills, with hanging woods and mountain-streams and waterfalls. But they can work just as well in a mean London lodging, such as this where Effie sat, looking out, if she looked through the curtain, upon a most commonplace street. We can all—common spirits as well as poets—rise above our streets and houses and our dingy setting—otherwise there would be no work done at all. Nay, if we were all cockered up, and daintily surrounded with things æsthetic and artistic and beautiful, I believe we should be so happy that nobody would ever do anything. The poet would murmur his thoughts in indolent rhyme by the fireside: the musician would drop his fingers among the notes, echoing faintly and imperfectly the music in his soul—all for his own enjoyment: the story-teller would tell his stories to his wife: the dramatist would make plots without words for his children to act: the painter would half sketch his visions and leave them unfinished. Art would die.
No such temptations were offered to Effie. The æsthetic movement had not touched that ground-floor front. The shaky round table stood under the flaring gas which every night made her head ache; the chiffonier contained in its recesses the tea and sugar and bread and butter, and, when the money ran to such luxuries, her jam or her honey or her oranges. There was one easy-chair and one arm-chair; and before the window a small square table, which had, at least, the merit of being firm; and at this she wrote. Everybody knows this kind of room perfectly.
The poetic workshop is always kept locked. No poet ever tells of the terrific struggles he has to encounter before he finally subdues his thought and compels it to walk or run in double harness of rhythm and rhyme. No poet ever confesses how he sometimes has to let that thought go because he cannot subdue it—nay, the same discomfiture has been reported of those who, like M. Jourdain, speak in prose. And no poet ever shows, as a painter will readily show us, the first sketch, the first rough draft of a poem, the unfinished lines, the first feeble attempts at the rhythmic expression of a great thought. Let us respect the mystery of the craft—have we not all dabbled in verse and essayed to play upon the scrannel-pipe?
It was towards noon, however, that Effie was disturbed by the arrival of a visitor. The event was so unusual—so unprecedented even—that no instructions had ever been given to the lodging-house servant in the art of introducing callers. She therefore opened the door, and put in her head—'A gentleman, Miss'—and went downstairs, leaving the gentleman to walk in if he pleased.
'You, Mr. Feilding?' Effie cried, springing to her feet. 'Oh! This is, indeed——'
The great man took her hand. 'My dear child,' he said, 'I have been thinking over our conversation of the other day. I am, of course, only anxious to be of service to you and to your brother, and so I thought I would call.' He was quite magnificent in his fur-lined coat, and he was very tall and big, so that he seemed to fill up the whole room. But he had an unusual air of hesitation. 'I thought,' he repeated, 'that I would call. Yes——'
The girl sat with her hands in her lap, waiting.
'You remember what I told you about—the—the verses which you sometimes bring me——'
'Oh! Yes. I remember. It is so kind of you, Mr. Feilding, so very kind and noble——' For the moment the dazzling prospect of seeing her verses acknowledged as her own in place of seeing them adopted by the Editor, made her believe that none but a truly noble person could do such a thing.