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Soon after this I contrived, by means which I must omit for want of
room, to transfer myself to London. And now began the latter and
fiercer stage of my long sufferings; without using a
disproportionate expression I might say, of my agony. For I now
suffered, for upwards of sixteen weeks, the physical anguish of
hunger in. I various degrees of intensity, but as bitter perhaps as
ever any human being can have suffered who has survived it would not
needlessly harass my reader's feelings by a detail of all that I
endured; for extremities such as these, under any circumstances of
heaviest misconduct or guilt, cannot be contemplated, even in
description, without a rueful pity that is painful to the natural
goodness of the human heart. Let it suffice, at least on this
occasion, to say that a few fragments of bread from the breakfast-
table of one individual (who supposed me to be ill, but did not know
of my being in utter want), and these at uncertain intervals,
constituted my whole support. During the former part of my
sufferings (that is, generally in Wales, and always for the first
two months in London) I was houseless, and very seldom slept under a
roof. To this constant exposure to the open air I ascribe it
mainly that I did not sink under my torments. Latterly, however,
when colder and more inclement weather came on, and when, from the
length of m sufferings, I had begun to sink into a more languishing
condition, it was no doubt fortunate for me that the same person to
whose breakfast-table I had access, allowed me to sleep in a large
unoccupied house of which he was tenant. Unoccupied I call it, for
there was no household or establishment in it; nor any furniture,
indeed, except a table and a few chairs. But I found, on taking
possession of my new quarters, that the house already contained one
single inmate, a poor friendless child, apparently ten years old;
but she seemed hunger-bitten, and sufferings of that sort often make
children look older than they are. From this forlorn child I
learned that she had slept and lived there alone for some time
before I came; and great joy the poor creature expressed when she
found that I was in future to be her companion through the hours of
darkness. The house was large, and, from the want of furniture, the
noise of the rats made a prodigious echoing on the spacious
staircase and hall; and amidst the real fleshly ills of cold and, I
fear, hunger, the forsaken child had found leisure to suffer still
more (it appeared) from the self-created one of ghosts. I promised
her protection against all ghosts whatsoever, but alas! I could
offer her no other assistance. We lay upon the floor, with a bundle
of cursed law papers for a pillow, but with no other covering than a
sort of large horseman's cloak; afterwards, however, we discovered
in a garret an old sofa-cover, a small piece of rug, and some
fragments of other articles, which added a little to our warmth.
The poor child crept close to me for warmth, and for security
against her ghostly enemies. When I was not more than usually ill I
took her into my arms, so that in general she was tolerably warm,
and often slept when I could not, for during the last two months of
my sufferings I slept much in daytime, and was apt to fall into
transient dosings at all hours. But my sleep distressed me more
than my watching, for beside the tumultuousness of my dreams (which
were only not so awful as those which I shall have to describe
hereafter as produced by opium), my sleep was never more than what
is called DOG-SLEEP; so that I could hear myself moaning, and was
often, as it seemed to me, awakened suddenly by my own voice; and
about this time a hideous sensation began to haunt me as soon as I
fell into a slumber, which has since returned upon me at different
periods of my life--viz., a sort of twitching (I know not where, but
apparently about the region of the stomach) which compelled me
violently to throw out my feet for the sake of relieving it. This
sensation coming on as soon as I began to sleep, and the effort to
relieve it constantly awaking me, at length I slept only from
exhaustion; and from increasing weakness (as I said before) I was
constantly falling asleep and constantly awaking. Meantime, the
master of the house sometimes came in upon us suddenly, and very
early; sometimes not till ten o'clock, sometimes not at all. He was
in constant fear of bailiffs. Improving on the plan of Cromwell,
every night he slept in a different quarter of London; and I
observed that he never failed to examine through a private window
the appearance of those who knocked at the door before he would
allow it to be opened. He breaksfasted alone; indeed, his tea
equipage would hardly have admitted of his hazarding an invitation
to a second person, any more than the quantity of esculent materiel,
which for the most part was little more than a roll or a few
biscuits which he had bought on his road from the place where he had
slept. Or, if he HAD asked a party--as I once learnedly and
facetiously observed to him--the several members of it must have
STOOD in the relation to each other (not SATE in any relation
whatever) of succession, as the metaphysicians have it, and not of a
coexistence; in the relation of the parts of time, and not of the
parts of space. During his breakfast I generally contrived a reason
for lounging in, and, with an air of as much indifference as I could
assume, took up such fragments as he had left; sometimes, indeed,
there were none at all. In doing this I committed no robbery except
upon the man himself, who was thus obliged (I believe) now and then
to send out at noon for an extra biscuit; for as to the poor child,
SHE was never admitted into his study (if I may give that name to
his chief depository of parchments, law writings, etc.); that room
was to her the Bluebeard room of the house, being regularly locked
on his departure to dinner, about six o'clock, which usually was his
final departure for the night. Whether this child were an
illegitimate daughter of Mr. -, or only a servant, I could not
ascertain; she did not herself know; but certainly she was treated
altogether as a menial servant. No sooner did Mr.--make his
appearance than she went below stairs, brushed his shoes, coat, &c.;
and, except when she was summoned to run an errand, she never
emerged from the dismal Tartarus of the kitchen, &c., to the upper
air until my welcome knock at night called up her little trembling
footsteps to the front door. Of her life during the daytime,
however, I knew little but what I gathered from her own account at
night, for as soon as the hours of business commenced I saw that my
absence would be acceptable, and in general, therefore, I went off
and sate in the parks or elsewhere until nightfall.
But who and what, meantime, was the master of the house himself?
Reader, he was one of those anomalous practitioners in lower
departments of the law who--what shall I say?--who on prudential
reasons, or from necessity, deny themselves all indulgence in the
luxury of too delicate a conscience, (a periphrasis which might be
abridged considerably, but THAT I leave to the reader's taste): in
many walks of life a conscience is a more expensive encumbrance than
a wife or a carriage; and just as people talk of "laying down" their
carriages, so I suppose my friend Mr.--had "laid down" his
conscience for a time, meaning, doubtless, to resume it as soon as
he could afford it. The inner economy of such a man's daily life
would present a most strange picture, if I could allow myself to
amuse the reader at his expense. Even with my limited opportunities
for observing what went on, I saw many scenes of London intrigues
and complex chicanery, "cycle and epicycle, orb in orb," at which I
sometimes smile to this day, and at which I smiled then, in spite of
my misery. My situation, however, at that time gave me little
experience in my own person of any qualities in Mr. -'s character
but such as did him honour; and of his whole strange composition I
must forget everything but that towards me he was obliging, and to
the extent of his power, generous.
That power was not, indeed, very extensive; however, in common with
the rats, I sate rent free; and as Dr. Johnson has recorded that he
never but once in his life had as much wall-fruit as he could eat,
so let me be grateful that on that single occasion I had as large a
choice of apartments in a London mansion as I could possibly desire.
Except the Bluebeard room, which the poor child believed to be
haunted, all others, from the attics to the cellars, were at our
service; "the world was all before us," and we pitched our tent for
the night in any spot we chose. This house I have already described
as a large one; it stands in a conspicuous situation and in a well-
known part of London. Many of my readers will have passed it, I
doubt not, within a few hours of reading this. For myself, I never
fail to visit it when business draws me to London; about ten o'clock
this very night, August 15, 1821--being my birthday--I turned aside
from my evening walk down Oxford Street, purposely to take a glance
at it; it is now occupied by a respectable family, and by the lights
in the front drawing-room I observed a domestic party assembled,
perhaps at tea, and apparently cheerful and gay. Marvellous
contrast, in my eyes, to the darkness, cold, silence, and desolation
of that same house eighteen years ago, when its nightly occupants
were one famishing scholar and a neglected child. Her, by-the-bye,
in after-years I vainly endeavoured to trace. Apart from her
situation, she was not what would be called an interesting child;
she was neither pretty, nor quick in understanding, nor remarkably
pleasing in manners. But, thank God! even in those years I needed
not the embellishments of novel accessories to conciliate my
affections: plain human nature, in its humblest and most homely
apparel, was enough for me, and I loved the child because she was my
partner in wretchedness. If she is now living she is probably a
mother, with children of her own; but, as I have said, I could never
trace her.
This I regret; but another person there was at that time whom I have
since sought to trace with far deeper earnestness, and with far
deeper sorrow at my failure. This person was a young woman, and one
of that unhappy class who subsist upon the wages of prostitution. I
feel no shame, nor have any reason to feel it, in avowing that I was
then on familiar and friendly terms with many women in that
unfortunate condition. The reader needs neither smile at this
avowal nor frown; for, not to remind my classical readers of the old
Latin proverb, "Sine cerere," &c., it may well be supposed that in
the existing state of my purse my connection with such women could
not have been an impure one. But the truth is, that at no time of
my life have I been a person to hold myself polluted by the touch or
approach of any creature that wore a human shape; on the contrary,
from my very earliest youth it has been my pride to converse
familiarly, MORE SOCRATIO, with all human beings, man, woman, and
child, that chance might fling in my way; a practice which is
friendly to the knowledge of human nature, to good feelings, and to
that frankness of address which becomes a man who would be thought a
philosopher. For a philosopher should not see with the eyes of the
poor limitary creature calling himself a man of the world, and
filled with narrow and self-regarding prejudices of birth and
education, but should look upon himself as a catholic creature, and
as standing in equal relation to high and low, to educated and
uneducated, to the guilty and the innocent. Being myself at that
time of necessity a peripatetic, or a walker of the streets, I
naturally fell in more frequently with those female peripatetics who
are technically called street-walkers. Many of these women had
occasionally taken my part against watchmen who wished to drive me
off the steps of houses where I was sitting. But one amongst them,
the one on whose account I have at all introduced this subject--yet
no! let me not class the, oh! noble-minded Ann--with that order of
women. Let me find, if it be possible, some gentler name to
designate the condition of her to whose bounty and compassion,
ministering to my necessities when all the world had forsaken me, I
owe it that I am at this time alive. For many weeks I had walked at
nights with this poor friendless girl up and down Oxford Street, or
had rested with her on steps and under the shelter of porticoes.
She could not be so old as myself; she told me, indeed, that she had
not completed her sixteenth year. By such questions as my interest
about her prompted I had gradually drawn forth her simple history.
Hers was a case of ordinary occurrence (as I have since had reason
to think), and one in which, if London beneficence had better
adapted its arrangements to meet it, the power of the law might
oftener be interposed to protect and to avenge. But the stream of
London charity flows in a channel which, though deep and mighty, is
yet noiseless and underground; not obvious or readily accessible to
poor houseless wanderers; and it cannot be denied that the outside
air and framework of London society is harsh, cruel, and repulsive.
In any case, however, I saw that part of her injuries might easily
have been redressed, and I urged her often and earnestly to lay her
complaint before a magistrate. Friendless as she was, I assured her
that she would meet with immediate attention, and that English
justice, which was no respecter of persons, would speedily and amply
avenge her on the brutal ruffian who had plundered her little
property. She promised me often that she would, but she delayed
taking the steps I pointed out from time to time, for she was timid
and dejected to a degree which showed how deeply sorrow had taken
hold of her young heart; and perhaps she thought justly that the
most upright judge and the most righteous tribunals could do nothing
to repair her heaviest wrongs. Something, however, would perhaps
have been done, for it had been settled between us at length, but
unhappily on the very last time but one that I was ever to see her,
that in a day or two we should go together before a magistrate, and
that I should speak on her behalf. This little service it was
destined, however, that I should never realise. Meantime, that
which she rendered to me, and which was greater than I could ever
have repaid her, was this:- One night, when we were pacing slowly
along Oxford Street, and after a day when I had felt more than
usually ill and faint, I requested her to turn off with me into Soho
Square. Thither we went, and we sat down on the steps of a house,
which to this hour I never pass without a pang of grief and an inner
act of homage to the spirit of that unhappy girl, in memory of the
noble action which she there performed. Suddenly, as we sate, I
grew much worse. I had been leaning my head against her bosom, and
all at once I sank from her arms and fell backwards on the steps.
From the sensations I then had, I felt an inner conviction of the
liveliest kind, that without some powerful and reviving stimulus I
should either have died on the spot, or should at least have sunk to
a point of exhaustion from which all reascent under my friendless
circumstances would soon have become hopeless. Then it was, at this
crisis of my fate, that my poor orphan companion, who had herself
met with little but injuries in this world, stretched out a saving
hand to me. Uttering a cry of terror, but without a moment's delay,
she ran off into Oxford Street, and in less time than could be
imagined returned to me with a glass of port wine and spices, that
acted upon my empty stomach, which at that time would have rejected
all solid food, with an instantaneous power of restoration; and for
this glass the generous girl without a murmur paid out of her humble
purse at a time--be it remembered!--when she had scarcely
wherewithal to purchase the bare necessaries of life, and when she
could have no reason to expect that I should ever be able to
reimburse her.
Oh, youthful benefactress! how often in succeeding years, standing
in solitary places, and thinking of thee with grief of heart and
perfect love--how often have I wished that, as in ancient times, the
curse of a father was believed to have a supernatural power, and to
pursue its object with a fatal necessity of self-fulfilment; even so
the benediction of a heart oppressed with gratitude might have a
like prerogative, might have power given to it from above to chase,
to haunt, to waylay, to overtake, to pursue thee into the central
darkness of a London brothel, or (if it were possible) into the
darkness of the grave, there to awaken thee with an authentic
message of peace and forgiveness, and of final reconciliation!
I do not often weep: for not only do my thoughts on subjects
connected with the chief interests of man daily, nay hourly, descend
a thousand fathoms "too deep for tears;" not only does the sternness
of my habits of thought present an antagonism to the feelings which
prompt tears--wanting of necessity to those who, being protected
usually by their levity from any tendency to meditative sorrow,
would by that same levity be made incapable of resisting it on any
casual access of such feelings; but also, I believe that all minds
which have contemplated such objects as deeply as I have done, must,
for their own protection from utter despondency, have early
encouraged and cherished some tranquillising belief as to the future
balances and the hieroglyphic meanings of human sufferings. On
these accounts I am cheerful to this hour, and, as I have said, I do
not often weep. Yet some feelings, though not deeper or more
passionate, are more tender than others; and often, when I walk at
this time in Oxford Street by dreamy lamplight, and hear those airs
played on a barrel-organ which years ago solaced me and my dear
companion (as I must always call her), I shed tears, and muse with
myself at the mysterious dispensation which so suddenly and so
critically separated us for ever. How it happened the reader will
understand from what remains of this introductory narration.
Soon after the period of the last incident I have recorded I met in
Albemarle Street a gentleman of his late Majesty's household. This
gentleman had received hospitalities on different occasions from my
family, and he challenged me upon the strength of my family
likeness. I did not attempt any disguise; I answered his questions
ingenuously, and, on his pledging his word of honour that he would
not betray me to my guardians, I gave him an address to my friend
the attorney's. The next day I received from him a 10 pound bank-
note. The letter enclosing it was delivered with other letters of
business to the attorney, but though his look and manner informed me
that he suspected its contents, he gave it up to me honourably and
without demur.
This present, from the particular service to which it was applied,
leads me naturally to speak of the purpose which had allured me up
to London, and which I had been (to use a forensic word) soliciting
from the first day of my arrival in London to that of my final
departure.
In so mighty a world as London it will surprise my readers that I
should not have found some means of starving off the last
extremities, of penury; and it will strike them that two resources
at least must have been open to me--viz., either to seek assistance
from the friends of my family, or to turn my youthful talents and
attainments into some channel of pecuniary emolument. As to the
first course, I may observe generally, that what I dreaded beyond
all other evils was the chance of being reclaimed by my guardians;
not doubting that whatever power the law gave them would have been
enforced against me to the utmost--that is, to the extremity of
forcibly restoring me to the school which I had quitted, a
restoration which, as it would in my eyes have been a dishonour,
even if submitted to voluntarily, could not fail, when extorted from
me in contempt and defiance of my own wishes and efforts, to have
been a humiliation worse to me than death, and which would indeed
have terminated in death. I was therefore shy enough of applying
for assistance even in those quarters where I was sure of receiving
it, at the risk of furnishing my guardians with any clue of
recovering me. But as to London in particular, though doubtless my
father had in his lifetime had many friends there, yet (as ten years
had passed since his death) I remembered few of them even by name;
and never having seen London before, except once for a few hours, I
knew not the address of even those few. To this mode of gaining
help, therefore, in part the difficulty, but much more the paramount
fear which I have mentioned, habitually indisposed me. In regard to
the other mode, I now feel half inclined to join my reader in
wondering that I should have overlooked it. As a corrector of Greek
proofs (if in no other way) I might doubtless have gained enough for
my slender wants. Such an office as this I could have discharged
with an exemplary and punctual accuracy that would soon have gained
me the confidence of my employers. But it must not be forgotten
that, even for such an office as this, it was necessary that I
should first of all have an introduction to some respectable
publisher, and this I had no means of obtaining. To say the truth,
however, it had never once occurred to me to think of literary
labours as a source of profit. No mode sufficiently speedy of
obtaining money had ever occurred to me but that of borrowing it on
the strength of my future claims and expectations. This mode I
sought by every avenue to compass; and amongst other persons I
applied to a Jew named D- {4}
To this Jew, and to other advertising money-lenders (some of whom
were, I believe, also Jews), I had introduced myself with an account
of my expectations; which account, on examining my father's will at
Doctors' Commons, they had ascertained to be correct. The person
there mentioned as the second son of--was found to have all the
claims (or more than all) that I had stated; but one question still
remained, which the faces of the Jews pretty significantly
suggested--was I that person? This doubt had never occurred to me
as a possible one; I had rather feared, whenever my Jewish friends
scrutinised me keenly, that I might be too well known to be that
person, and that some scheme might be passing in their minds for
entrapping me and selling me to my guardians. It was strange to me
to find my own self materialiter considered (so I expressed it, for
I doated on logical accuracy of distinctions), accused, or at least
suspected, of counterfeiting my own self formaliter considered.
However, to satisfy their scruples, I took the only course in my
power. Whilst I was in Wales I had received various letters from
young friends these I produced, for I carried them constantly in my
pocket, being, indeed, by this time almost the only relics of my
personal encumbrances (excepting the clothes I wore) which I had not
in one way or other disposed of. Most of these letters were from
the Earl of -, who was at that time my chief (or rather only)
confidential friend. These letters were dated from Eton. I had
also some from the Marquis of -, his father, who, though absorbed in
agricultural pursuits, yet having been an Etonian himself, and as
good a scholar as a nobleman needs to be, still retained an
affection for classical studies and for youthful scholars. He had
accordingly, from the time that I was fifteen, corresponded with me;
sometimes upon the great improvements which he had made or was
meditating in the counties of M- and Sl- since I had been there,
sometimes upon the merits of a Latin poet, and at other times
suggesting subjects to me on which he wished me to write verses.
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