“That’s nothin’,” declared Brunton cheerily. “You should hear Tom sometimes. Last night he was denyin’ th’ existence of th’ Almighty. Dr. Barnett, the editor of the Sunday Times, was present. B— was at one time a Dissenting divine, you know, and is as orthodox as the Pope of Rome. He gently rebuked Tom. It was only addin’ fuel to the flame. ‘If there be a God, why don’t He destroy me now?’ says Tom. Then it was old Barnett’s turn. With a sweet smile and the soft accent of a sort of evangelical angel, he answered: ‘You forget, Tom, that the Almighty is capable of an infinite contempt!’ And be jabers,” concluded Brunton, “poor Robertson was as dumb as an oyster for the rest of the evening.”
It was a noble retort, and it is pleasant to know that Robertson accepted it in silence, and subsequently expressed a very pretty contrition. Robertson was the first experience I had of the fact that an author’s personality or temperament can rarely be gathered from his works. During my sojourn in the tents of Shem I was destined to meet many famous illustrations of the same truth.
CHAPTER III
LEARNING TO SWIM
The receipt of a cheque in payment for the Robertson article in Once a Week convinced me, not only that I had discovered my métier, but that I had formally entered upon a profitable occupation, which would be pursued under most agreeable conditions. Let me at once confess that some years were to elapse before the returns from my literary labours amounted to a sum that would pay for my tobacco and my laundry. But if in the period of keeping my terms cheques were few and far between, I got no end of an opportunity of seeing my name in print as the author of at least one prodigious poetical work and of several essays, chiefly of dramatic criticism. It is pleasant to reflect that these exercises—early and immature though they were—brought me several friends in the literary and artistic world. At this juncture, indeed, it appeared probable that I would eventually develop into a “litery gent” whose future outlook would be that of considerable dubiety as to the respectability of the journalistic calling.
A friendly solicitor—I had been admonished to make friends of the Mammon of Unrighteousness—introduced me at a City dinner to William Harrison Ainsworth, author of “The Tower of London” and other lurid romances. It was a bit of a surprise to meet the venerable man, for, truth to tell, I had thought him long since dead. He was by no means dead, however, or even apparently moribund, but extremely alive to anything that looked like business. His Manchester training never failed him to the end. He exhibited a fatherly interest in me, which was extremely flattering to my vanity, and before we parted he had arranged a luncheon date for the following week. He was living at the time at Hurstpierpoint in Sussex. I kept the appointment, you may be well assured, and after our little midday meal the worthy exponent of Dick Turpin opened his business.
It was a simple affair. He had acquired a magazine some time before, and, finding that its circulation did not come up to his expectations, he had resold to a relative—a cousin of his own. He had agreed with the sanguine relative that he would continue to send in signed contributions, and that he would secure the services of other brilliant writers; and I was one of the “brilliant writers” whose exertions were to raise the cousin’s hopeless purchase into a position of safety. Harrison Ainsworth candidly assured me that the proprietor was not in a position to pay for the serial rights of my esteemed contributions. But the copyright should remain mine—a valuable concession and consideration!—and I should receive suitable remuneration when the magazine “turned the corner.” Ah, that fugacious corner which, always nearing, is rarely reached, and never by any chance turned! How often has it lured the novice and tempted even the needy veteran victim! I agreed to all my host’s suggestions. As I left him, he murmured a tremulous “God bless you!” and I was conscious of a fine feeling of elation as I returned to town—my star evidently in the ascendant.
If there was no money to be obtained from my new engagement, there was some fun: there was excellent practice, and there was the unexpected introduction to a “set” whose members I had always admired at a distance, but with whom my taste and training had denied me an understanding sympathy. For a while I fluttered in those reserved groves. But when at last the Street of Adventure claimed me as its own, my new associates drew me from those higher altitudes. The loss, I am sure, has all been mine.
On the magazine, to which I had pledged myself, I commenced as a poet, a poem being the only thing I had by me. The cousinly proprietor—an extremely pleasant old gentleman, also named Ainsworth—appeared glad to accept anything. He was the only person whom I have known literally to laugh over misfortunes. He was a septuagenarian Mark Tapley. He gave excellent dinners at Ravenscourt Park—the house in which he entertained has long since been reduced to what printers call “pie,” its place being covered with brand-new “mansions” and “gardens” and villas. It speaks volumes for the old gentleman’s good-nature that, when my “poem” appeared, filling five pages of his periodical, he never uttered a word of rebuke or reproach. That was forty years ago, and I still regard the incident with gratitude, for the composition was a narrative of great duration. The scene was laid in Italy, the subject romantic, and the verse written in heroic couplets, interspersed with lyrics after the manner made fashionable by the Poet Laureate. I never saw it again after my first rapturous readings, but I have little doubt that it was sad stuff.
I then resolutely set myself to keep my proprietor fed up with prose essays. I had the material, and I took no end of pains with the setting. They were for the most part essays in literary criticism, and one or two of them attracted the attention of the right sort of people. Many years after its appearance, I was surprised and gratified to find one of these early articles quoted in the Athenæum by Theodore Watts-Dunton, and quoted, moreover, by that distinguished man of letters as being authoritative. Alas! by the time this appreciation of my literary research and criticism appeared I had ceased to take myself very seriously, and I was mixing in a society that did not take anything very seriously. In my early years I had the run of a good dramatic library, particularly rich in editions of the Elizabethan masters. The majority of my essays of this period were derived from those boyish studies, fortified by later browsings in the reading-room of the British Museum. The eminent but erratic Irish gentleman with whom I was reading Law had suggested the Museum, little imagining the direction which my researches there were sometimes to take. To which of these fugitive pieces of the Ainsworthonian period of my novitiate I owed my introduction to Madox Brown, the celebrated Pre-Raphaelite painter, I cannot distinctly recall. Clearly, it would not have been to that terrible Italian romance in heroic couplets. But the thing happened somehow, and I still remember the pleasurable sensations I experienced when Oliver, the son of the great artist, called on me by appointment and took me round to the house in Fitzroy Square, to be introduced to his father. Madox Brown was a handsome man, of medium height, broad-shouldered, with a wiry beard, at that time just beginning to show the grey autumnal tints. The charm of the man was to be caught in the sweet benignity of his expression and in the musical cadences of his voice. He was evidently the devoted family man. And it was his interest in his own children that caused him to suffer the society of other young fellows struggling for notice. Among those who dropped in at the studio that afternoon were Theo Marzials, the author of the popular “Twickenham Ferry,” and Hueffer, the exponent of Wagner, who was engaged to Brown’s daughter.
A reception to which I received an invitation some weeks after was my first appearance in one of the select literary circles of the capital. It was in honour of Hueffer and his bride-to-be, and was held at the Madox Brown house in Fitzroy Square on the night before the wedding. It was a rather weird experience. And not even the fact that Swinburne was present—and his was a figure to arouse all my youthful enthusiasm—reconciled me to the gathering. I felt as much alone in this crowd as I had formerly felt in the seething streets. I beat an early retreat, profoundly impressed by the reflection that I did not possess the natural adaptability which would make me an acceptable member of a society with its own especial equipment, its own passwords, and its own particular pose. I should never have become a competent authority on that which Carlyle calls “the Correggiosity of Correggio.”