Book: My Novel, Volume 6.

E >> Edward Bulwer Lytton >> My Novel, Volume 6.




Leonard had now only to discover the nobleman whose name had been so
vaguely uttered by poor Captain Digby. He had again recourse to the
"Court Guide;" and finding the address of two or three lords the first
syllable of whose titles seemed similar to that repeated to him, and all
living pretty near to each other, in the regions of Mayfair, he
ascertained his way to that quarter, and, exercising his mother-wit,
inquired at the neighbouring shops as to the personal appearance of these
noblemen. Out of consideration for his rusticity, he got very civil and
clear answers; but none of the lords in question corresponded with the
description given by Helen. One was old, another was exceedingly
corpulent, a third was bedridden,--none of them was known to keep a great
dog. It is needless to say that the name of L'Estrange (no habitant of
London) was not in the "Court Guide." And Dr. Morgan's assertion that
that person was always abroad unluckily dismissed from Leonard's mind the
name the homoeopathist had so casually mentioned. But Helen was not
disappointed when her young protector returned late in the day, and told
her of his ill-success. Poor child! she was so pleased in her heart not
to be separated from her new brother; and Leonard was touched to see how
she had contrived, in his absence, to give a certain comfort and cheerful
grace to the bare room devoted to himself. She had arranged his few
books and papers so neatly, near the window, in sight of the one green
elm. She had coaxed the smiling landlady out of one or two extra
articles of furniture, especially a walnut-tree bureau, and some odds and
ends of ribbon, with which last she had looped up the curtains. Even the
old rush-bottom chairs had a strange air of elegance, from the mode in
which they were placed. The fairies had given sweet Helen the art that
adorns a home, and brings out a smile from the dingiest corner of hut and
attic.

Leonard wondered and praised. He kissed his blushing ministrant
gratefully, and they sat down in joy to their abstemious meal; when
suddenly his face was overclouded,--there shot through him the
remembrance of Dr. Morgan's words, "The little girl can't stay with you,
--wrong and nonsensical. I think I know a lady who will take charge of
her."

"Ah," cried Leonard, sorrowfully, "how could I forget?" And he told Helen
what grieved him. Helen at first exclaimed that she would not go.
Leonard, rejoiced, then began to talk as usual of his great prospects;
and, hastily finishing his meal, as if there were no time to lose, sat
down at once to his papers. Then Helen contemplated him sadly, as he
bent over his delightful work. And when, lifting his radiant eyes from
his manuscripts, he exclaimed, "No, no, you shall not go. This must
succeed,--and we shall live together in some pretty cottage, where we can
see more than one tree,"--then Helen sighed, and did not answer this
time, "No, I will not go."

Shortly after she stole from the room, and into her own; and there,
kneeling down, she prayed, and her prayer was somewhat this, "Guard me
against my own selfish heart; may I never be a burden to him who has
shielded me."

Perhaps as the Creator looks down on this world, whose wondrous beauty
beams on us more and more, in proportion as our science would take it
from poetry into law,--perhaps He beholds nothing so beautiful as the
pure heart of a simple loving child.




CHAPTER XIV.

Leonard went out the next day with his precious manuscripts. He had read
sufficient of modern literature to know the names of the principal London
publishers; and to these he took his way with a bold step, though a
beating heart.

That day he was out longer than the last; and when he returned, and came
into the little room, Helen uttered a cry, for she scarcely recognized
him,--there was on his face so deep, so silent, and so concentrated a
despondency. He sat down listlessly, and did not kiss her this time, as
she stole towards him. He felt so humbled. He was a king deposed.

He take charge of another life! He!

She coaxed him at last into communicating his day's chronicle. The
reader beforehand knows too well what it must be to need detailed
repetition. Most of the publishers had absolutely refused to look at his
manuscripts; one or two had good-naturedly glanced over and returned them
at once with a civil word or two of flat rejection. One publisher alone
--himself a man of letters, and who in youth had gone through the same
bitter process of disillusion that now awaited the village genius--
volunteered some kindly though stern explanation and counsel to the
unhappy boy. This gentleman read a portion of Leonard's principal poem
with attention, and even with frank admiration. He could appreciate the
rare promise that it manifested. He sympathized with the boy's history,
and even with his hopes; and then he said, in bidding him farewell,

"If I publish this poem for you, speaking as a trader, I shall be a
considerable loser. Did I publish all I admire, out of sympathy with the
author, I should be a ruined man. But suppose that, impressed as I
really am with the evidence of no common poetic gifts in this manuscript,
I publish it, not as a trader, but a lover of literature, I shall in
reality, I fear, render you a great disservice, and perhaps unfit your
whole life for the exertions on which you must rely for independence."

"How, sir?" cried Leonard. "Not that I would ask you to injure yourself
for me," he added, with proud tears in his eyes.

"How, my young friend? I will explain. There is enough talent in these
verses to induce very flattering reviews in some of the literary
journals. You will read these, find yourself proclaimed a poet, will cry
'I am on the road to fame.' You will come to me, 'And my poem, how does
it sell?' I shall point to some groaning shelf, and say, 'Not twenty
copies! The journals may praise, but the public will not buy it.'
'But you will have got a name,' you say. Yes, a name as a poet just
sufficiently known to make every man in practical business disinclined to
give fair trial to your talents in a single department of positive life;
none like to employ poets;--a name that will not put a penny in your
purse,--worse still, that will operate as a barrier against every escape
into the ways whereby men get to fortune. But having once tasted praise,
you will continue to sigh for it: you will perhaps never again get a
publisher to bring forth a poem, but you will hanker round the purlieus
of the Muses, scribble for periodicals, fall at last into a bookseller's
drudge. Profits will be so precarious and uncertain, that to avoid debt
may be impossible; then, you who now seem so ingenuous and so proud, will
sink deeper still into the literary mendicant, begging, borrowing--"

"Never! never! never!" cried Leonard, veiling his face with his hands.

"Such would have been my career," continued the publisher; "but I luckily
had a rich relative, a trader, whose calling I despised as a boy, who
kindly forgave my folly, bound me as an apprentice, and here I am; and
now I can afford to write books as well as sell them.

"Young man, you must have respectable relations,--go by their advice and
counsel; cling fast to some positive calling. Be anything in this city
rather than poet by profession."

"And how, sir, have there ever been poets? Had they other callings?"

"Read their biography, and then--envy them!"

Leonard was silent a moment; but lifting his head, answered loud and
quickly, "I have read their biography. True, their lot was poverty,--
perhaps hunger. Sir, I--envy them!"

"Poverty and hunger are small evils," answered the bookseller, with a
grave, kind smile. "There are worse,--debt and degradation, and--
despair."

"No, sir, no, you exaggerate; these last are not the lot of all poets."

"Right, for most of our greatest poets had some private means of their
own. And for others--why, all who have put into a lottery have not drawn
blanks. But who could advise another man to set his whole hope of
fortune on the chance of a prize in a lottery? And such a lottery!"
groaned the publisher, glancing towards sheets and reams of dead authors,
lying, like lead, upon his shelves.

Leonard clutched his manuscripts to his heart, and hurried away.

"Yes," he muttered, as Helen clung to him, and tried to console,--"yes,
you were right: London is very vast, very strong, and very cruel;" and
his head sank lower and lower yet upon his bosom.

The door was flung widely open, and in, unannounced, walked Dr. Morgan.

The child turned to him, and at the sight of his face she remembered her
father; and the tears that for Leonard's sake she had been trying to
suppress found way.

The good doctor soon gained all the confidence of these two young hearts;
and after listening to Leonard's story of his paradise lost in a day, he
patted him on the shoulder and said, "Well, you will call on me on
Monday, and we will see. Meanwhile, borrow these of me!"--and he tried
to slip three sovereigns into the boy's hand. Leonard was indignant.
The bookseller's warning flashed on him. Mendicancy! Oh, no, he had not
yet come to that! He was almost rude and savage in his rejection; and
the doctor did not like him the less for it.

"You are an obstinate mule," said the homoeopathist, reluctantly putting
up his sovereigns. "Will you work at something practical and prosy, and
let the poetry rest a while?"

"Yes," said Leonard, doggedly. "I will work."

"Very well, then. I know an honest bookseller, and he shall give you
some employment; and meanwhile, at all events, you will be among books,
and that will be some comfort."

Leonard's eyes brightened. "A great comfort, sir." He pressed the hand
he had before put aside to his grateful heart.

"But," resumed the doctor, seriously, "you really feel a strong
predisposition to make verses?"

"I did, sir."

"Very bad symptom indeed, and must be stopped before a relapse! Here,
I have cured three prophets and ten poets with this novel specific."

While thus speaking he had got out his book and a globule. "Agaricus
muscarius dissolved in a tumbler of distilled water,--teaspoonful
whenever the fit comes on. Sir, it would have cured Milton himself."

"And now for you, my child," turning to Helen, "I have found a lady who
will be very kind to you. Not a menial situation. She wants some one to
read to her and tend on her; she is old and has no children. She wants a
companion, and prefers a girl of your age to one older. Will this suit
you?"

Leonard walked away.

Helen got close to the doctor's ear, and whispered, "No, I cannot leave
him now,--he is so sad."

"Cott!" grunted the doctor, "you two must have been reading 'Paul and
Virginia.' If I could but stay in England, I would try what ignatia
would do in this case,--interesting experiment! Listen to me, little
girl, and go out of the room, you, sir."

Leonard, averting his face, obeyed. Helen made an involuntary step after
him; the doctor detained and drew her on his knee.

"What's your Christian name?--I forget."

"Helen."

"Helen, listen. In a year or two you will be a young woman, and it would
be very wrong then to live alone with that young man. Meanwhile you have
no right to cripple all his energies. He must not have you leaning on
his right arm,--you would weigh it down. I am going away, and when I am
gone there will be no one to help you, if you reject the friend I offer
you. Do as I tell you, for a little girl so peculiarly susceptible (a
thorough pulsatilla constitution) cannot be obstinate and egotistical."

"Let me see him cared for and happy, sir," said she, firmly, "and I will
go where you wish."

"He shall be so; and to-morrow, while he is out, I will come and fetch
you. Nothing so painful as leave-taking, shakes the nervous system, and
is a mere waste of the animal economy."

Helen sobbed aloud; then, writhing from the doctor, she exclaimed, "But
he may know where I am? We may see each other sometimes? Ah, sir, it
was at my father's grave that we first met, and I think Heaven sent him
to me. Do not part us forever."

"I should have a heart of stone if I did," cried the doctor, vehemently;
"and Miss Starke shall let him come and visit you once a week. I'll give
her something to make her. She is naturally indifferent to others. I
will alter her whole constitution, and melt her into sympathy--with
rhododendron and arsenic!"




CHAPTER XV.

Before he went the doctor wrote a line to "Mr. Prickett, Bookseller,
Holborn," and told Leonard to take it the next morning, as addressed.
"I will call on Prickett myself tonight and prepare him for your visit.
But I hope and trust you will only have to stay there a few days."

He then turned the conversation, to communicate his plans for Helen.
Miss Starke lived at Highgate,--a worthy woman, stiff and prim, as old
maids sometimes are; but just the place for a little girl like Helen, and
Leonard should certainly be allowed to call and see her.

Leonard listened and made no opposition,--now that his day-dream was
dispelled, he had no right to pretend to be Helen's protector. He could
have prayed her to share his wealth and his fame; his penury and his
drudgery--no.

It was a very sorrowful evening,--that between the adventurer and the
child. They sat up late, till their candle had burned down to the
socket; neither did they talk much; but his hand clasped hers all the
time, and her head pillowed it self on his shoulder. I fear when they
parted it was not for sleep.

And when Leonard went forth the next morning, Helen stood at the street
door watching him depart--slowly, slowly. No doubt, in that humble lane
there were many sad hearts; but no heart so heavy as that of the still,
quiet child, when the form she had watched was to be seen no more, and,
still standing on the desolate threshold, she gazed into space, and all
was vacant.




CHAPTER XVI.

Mr. Prickett was a believer in homeeopathy, and declared, to the
indignation of all the apothecaries round Holborn, that he had been cured
of a chronic rheumatism by Dr. Morgan. The good doctor had, as he
promised, seen Mr. Prickett when he left Leonard, and asked him as a
favour to find some light occupation for the boy, that would serve as an
excuse for a modest weekly salary. "It will not be for long," said the
doctor: "his relations are respectable and well off. I will write to his
grandparents, and in a few days I hope to relieve you of the charge. Of
course, if you don't want him, I will repay what he costs meanwhile."

Mr. Prickett, thus prepared for Leonard, received him very graciously;
and, after a few questions, said Leonard was just the person he wanted to
assist him in cataloguing his books, and offered him most handsomely L1 a
week for the task.

Plunged at once into a world of books vaster than he had ever before won
admission to, that old divine dream of knowledge, out of which poetry had
sprung, returned to the village student at the very sight of the
venerable volumes. The collection of Mr. Prickett was, however, in
reality by no means large; but it comprised not only the ordinary
standard works, but several curious and rare ones. And Leonard paused in
making the catalogue, and took many a hasty snatch of the contents of
each tome, as it passed through his hands. The bookseller, who was an
enthusiast for old books, was pleased to see a kindred feeling (which his
shop-boy had never exhibited) in his new assistant; and he talked about
rare editions and scarce copies, and initiated Leonard into many of the
mysteries of the bibliographist.

Nothing could be more dark and dingy than the shop. There was a booth
outside, containing cheap books and odd volumes, round which there was
always an attentive group; within, a gas-lamp burned night and day.

But time passed quickly to Leonard. He missed not the green fields, he
forgot his disappointments, he ceased to remember even Helen. O strange
passion of knowledge! nothing like thee for strength and devotion!

Mr. Prickett was a bachelor, and asked Leonard to dine with him on a cold
shoulder of mutton. During dinner the shop-boy kept the shop, and Mr.
Prickett was really pleasant, as well as loquacious. He took a liking to
Leonard, and Leonard told him his adventures with the publishers, at
which Mr. Prickett rubbed his hands and laughed, as at a capital joke.
"Oh, give up poetry, and stick to a shop," cried he; "and to cure you
forever of the mad whim to be author, I'll just lend you the 'Life and
Works of Chatterton.' You may take it home with you and read before you
go to bed. You'll come back quite a new man to-morrow."

Not till night, when the shop was closed, did Leonard return to his
lodging. And when he entered the room, he was struck to the soul by the
silence, by the void. Helen was gone!

There was a rose-tree in its pot on the table at which he wrote, and by
it a scrap of paper, on which was written,

DEAR, dear brother Leonard, God bless you. I will let you know when
we can meet again. Take care of this rose, Brother, and don't
forget poor

HELEN.

Over the word "forget" there was a big round blistered spot that nearly
effaced the word.

Leonard leaned his face on his hands, and for the first time in his life
he felt what solitude really is. He could not stay long in the room. He
walked out again, and wandered objectless to and fro the streets. He
passed that stiller and humbler neighbourhood, he mixed with the throng
that swarmed in the more populous thoroughfares. Hundreds and thousands
passed him by, and still--still such solitude.

He came back, lighted his candle, and resolutely drew forth the
"Chatterton" which the bookseller had lent him. It was an old edition,
in one thick volume. It had evidently belonged to some contemporary of
the poet's,--apparently an inhabitant of Bristol,--some one who had
gathered up many anecdotes respecting Chatterton's habits, and who
appeared even to have seen him, nay, been in his company; for the book
was interleaved, and the leaves covered with notes and remarks, in a
stiff clear hand,--all evincing personal knowledge of the mournful
immortal dead. At first, Leonard read with an effort; then the strange
and fierce spell of that dread life seized upon him,--seized with pain
and gloom and terror,--this boy dying by his own hand, about the age
Leonard had attained himself. This wondrous boy, of a genius beyond all
comparison the greatest that ever yet was developed and extinguished at
the age of eighteen,--self-taught, self-struggling, self-immolated.
Nothing in literature like that life and that death!

With intense interest Leonard perused the tale of the brilliant
imposture, which had been so harshly and so absurdly construed into the
crime of a forgery, and which was (if not wholly innocent) so akin to the
literary devices always in other cases viewed with indulgence, and
exhibiting, in this, intellectual qualities in themselves so amazing,
--such patience, such forethought, such labour, such courage, such
ingenuity,--the qualities that, well directed, make men great, not only
in books, but action. And, turning from the history of the imposture to
the poems themselves, the young reader bent before their beauty,
literally awed and breathless. How this strange Bristol boy tamed and
mastered his rude and motley materials into a music that comprehended
every tune and key, from the simplest to the sublimest! He turned back
to the biography; be read on; he saw the proud, daring, mournful spirit
alone in the Great City, like himself. He followed its dismal career, he
saw it falling with bruised and soiled wings into the mire. He turned
again to the later works, wrung forth as tasks for bread,--the satires
without moral grandeur, the politics without honest faith. He shuddered
and sickened as he read. True, even here his poet mind appreciated (what
perhaps only poets can) the divine fire that burned fitfully through that
meaner and more sordid fuel,--he still traced in those crude, hasty,
bitter offerings to dire Necessity the hand of the young giant who had
built up the stately verse of Rowley. But alas! how different from that
"mighty line." How all serenity and joy had fled from these later
exercises of art degraded into journey-work! Then rapidly came on the
catastrophe,--the closed doors, the poison, the suicide, the manuscripts
torn by the hands of despairing wrath, and strewed round the corpse upon
the funereal floors. It was terrible! The spectre of the Titan boy (as
described in the notes written on the margin), with his haughty brow, his
cynic smile, his lustrous eyes, haunted all the night the baffled and
solitary child of song.




CHAPTER XVII.

It will often happen that what ought to turn the human mind from some
peculiar tendency produces the opposite effect. One would think that the
perusal in the newspaper of some crime and capital punishment would warn
away all who had ever meditated the crime, or dreaded the chance of
detection. Yet it is well known to us that many a criminal is made by
pondering over the fate of some predecessor in guilt. There is a
fascination in the Dark and Forbidden, which, strange to say, is only
lost in fiction. No man is more inclined to murder his nephews, or
stifle his wife, after reading "Richard the Third" or "Othello." It is
the reality that is necessary to constitute the danger of contagion.
Now, it was this reality in the fate and life and crowning suicide of
Chatterton that forced itself upon Leonard's thoughts, and sat there like
a visible evil thing, gathering evil like cloud around it. There was
much in the dead poet's character, his trials, and his doom, that stood
out to Leonard like a bold and colossal shadow of himself and his fate.
Alas! the book seller, in one respect, had said truly. Leonard came back
to him the next day a new man; and it seemed even to himself as if he had
lost a good angel in losing Helen. "Oh, that she had been by my side!"
thought he. "Oh, that I could have felt the touch of her confiding hand;
that, looking up from the scathed and dreary ruin of this life, that had
sublimely lifted itself from the plain, and sought to tower aloft from a
deluge, her mild look had spoken to me of innocent, humble, unaspiring
childhood! Ah! If indeed I were still necessary to her,--still the sole
guardian and protector,--then could I say to myself; 'Thou must not
despair and die! Thou hast her to live and to strive for.' But no, no!
Only this vast and terrible London,--the solitude of the dreary garret,
and those lustrous eyes, glaring alike through the throng and through the
solitude."




CHAPTER XVIII.

On the following Monday Dr. Morgan's shabby man-servant opened the door
to a young man in whom he did not at first remember a former visitor. A
few days before, embrowned with healthful travel, serene light in his
eye, simple trust on his careless lip, Leonard Fairfield had stood at
that threshold. Now again he stood there, pale and haggard, with a cheek
already hollowed into those deep anxious lines that speak of working
thoughts and sleepless nights; and a settled sullen gloom resting heavily
on his whole aspect.

"I call by appointment," said the boy, testily, as the servant stood
irresolute. The man gave way. "Master is just gone out to a patient:
please to wait, sir;" and he showed him into the little parlour. In a
few moments, two other patients were admitted. These were women, and
they began talking very loud. They disturbed Leonard's unsocial
thoughts. He saw that the door into the doctor's receivingroom was half
open, and, ignorant of the etiquette which holds such penetralia as
sacred, he walked in to escape from the gossips. He threw himself into
the doctor's own wellworn chair, and muttered to himself, "Why did he
tell me to come? What new can he think of for me? And if a favour,
should I take it? He has given me the means of bread by work: that is
all I have a right to ask from him, from any man,--all I should accept."

While thus soliloquizing, his eye fell on a letter lying open on the
table. He started. He recognized the handwriting,--the same as that of
the letter which had inclosed. L50 to his mother,--the letter of his
grandparents. He saw his own name: he saw something more,--words that
made his heart stand still, and his blood seem like ice in his veins. As
he thus stood aghast, a hand was laid on the letter, and a voice, in an
angry growl, muttered, "How dare you come into my room, and pe reading my
letters? Er-r-r!"

Leonard placed his own hand on the doctor's firmly, and said, in a fierce
tone, "This letter relates to me, belongs to me, crushes me. I have seen
enough to know that. I demand to read all,--learn all."

The doctor looked round, and seeing the door into the waiting-room still
open, kicked it to with his foot, and then said, under his breath, "What
have you read? Tell me the truth."

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