“Why in God’s name, should this injustice be? Why should a worthless lounger have his pockets full of gold by chance and heritage, while I, toiling wearily from morning till midnight, can scarce afford myself a satisfying meal?”
Why indeed? I have often thought about it. Now however I believe I can solve the problem out of my own personal experience. But… such an experience! Who will believe that anything so strange and terrific ever chanced to a mortal man? No one. Yet it is true; truer than so-called[2] truth. Moreover I know that many men are living under the same influence, that they are in the tangles of sin, but too weak to break the net in which they have become voluntarily imprisoned. Will they be taught, I wonder, the lesson I have learned?
But I do not write with any hope of either persuading or enlightening my fellow-men[3]. I know their obstinacy too well. I can gauge it by my own. I used to have proud belief in myself. And I am aware that others are in similar case. I merely intend to relate the various incidents of my life.
During a certain bitter winter, when a great wave of intense cold spread throughout all Europe, I, Geoffrey Tempest, was alone in London and starving. Now a starving man seldom gets the sympathy he merits. Few people believe in him. Worthy folks are the most incredulous. Some of them even laugh when told of hungry people. Or they will idly murmur ‘How dreadful!’ and at once turn to the discussion of the latest news for killing time. To be hungry sounds coarse and vulgar, and is not a topic for polite society, which always eats more than sufficient for its needs.
That time I knew the cruel meaning of the word “hunger” too well: the gnawing pain, the sick faintness, the deadly stupor, the insatiable animal craving for mere food. I felt that I had not deserved to suffer the wretchedness in which I found myself[4]. I had worked hard. From the time my father died, when I discovered that every penny of the fortune went to the swarming creditors, and that nothing of all our house and estate was left to me except a jewelled miniature of my mother who had lost her own life in giving me birth, – from that time, I had toiled late and early. I had used my University education to the literature. I had sought for employment on almost every journal in London, – refused by many, taken on trial by some, but getting steady pay from none.
Whoever seeks to live by brain and pen alone is, at the beginning of such a career, treated as a sort of social pariah. Nobody wants him, everybody despises him. His efforts are derided, his manuscripts are flung back to him unread. He is less cared for[5] than the condemned murderer in gaol. The murderer is at least fed and clothed. A clergyman visits him, and his gaoler will occasionally play cards with him. But a man with original thoughts and the power of expressing them, appears to be regarded by everyone in authority as much worse than the worst criminal.
I took both kicks and blows in sullen silence and lived on, – not for the love of life, but simply because I scorned the cowardice of self-destruction. I was young enough not to part with hope too easily. For about six months I got some work on a well-known literary journal. Thirty novels a week were sent to me to ‘criticise’. I was glancing hastily at about eight or ten of them, and writing one column of abuse concerning these thus casually selected. The remainder were useless at all. I found that this mode of action was considered ‘smart,’ and I pleased my editor who paid me the munificent sum of fifteen shillings for my weekly labour.
But on one fatal occasion I changed my tactics and warmly praised a work which my own conscience told me was both original and excellent. The author of it was an old enemy of the proprietor of the journal on which I was employed. My eulogistic review, unfortunately for me, appeared, and I was immediately dismissed.
After this I dragged on in a miserable way, doing some work for the dailies, and living on promises that never became realities, till, in the early January of the bitter winter, I found myself literally penniless and face to face with starvation. Moreover, I was owing a month’s rent for the poor lodging I occupied in a back street not far from the British Museum.
I had been out all day trudging from one newspaper office to another, seeking for work and finding none. Every available post was filled. I had also tried, unsuccessfully, to dispose of a manuscript of my own, – a work of fiction which I knew had some merit. But all the ‘readers’ found it exceptionally worthless. These ‘readers’ were novelists themselves who read other people’s productions in their spare moments and passed judgment on them.
The last publisher was a kindly man who looked at my shabby clothes and gaunt face with some commiseration.
“I’m sorry,” said he, “very sorry, but my readers are quite unanimous. From what I can learn, it seems to me you have been too earnest. And also, rather sarcastic against society. My dear fellow, that won’t do[6]. Never blame society, – it buys books! Now if you could write a smart love-story, slightly risky, – even a little more than risky for that matter; that is the sort of thing that suits the present age[7].”
“Pardon me,” I interposed, “but are you sure you judge the public taste correctly?”
He smiled a bland smile.
“Of course I am sure,” he replied. “It is my business to know the public taste as thoroughly as I know my own pocket. Understand me, I don’t suggest that you should write a book on an indecent subject, but I assure you high-class fiction doesn’t sell. The critics don’t like it. What goes down with them and with the public is some sensational realism.”
“I think,” I said with a forced smile, “if what you say be true, I must lay down the pen and try another trade. I consider Literature as the highest of all professions, and I would rather not join in with those who voluntarily degrade it.”
He gave me a quick side-glance of mingled incredulity and depreciation.
“Well, well!” he finally observed, “you are a little quixotic. Will you come on to my club and dine with me?”
I refused this invitation promptly. I knew my wretched plight, and pride – false pride if you will – rose up to my rescue. I bade him a hurried good-day, and started back to my lodging, carrying my rejected manuscript with me. Arrived there, my landlady met me, and asked me whether I would ‘kindly settle accounts’ the next day. She spoke civilly enough, and not without a certain compassionate hesitation in her manner. Her evident pity for me galled my spirit as much as the publisher’s offer of a dinner had wounded my pride. I at once promised her the money at the time she herself appointed, though I had not the least idea where or how I should get the required sum.
When I was in my room, I flung my useless manuscript on the floor and myself into a chair, and swore. It refreshed me, and it seemed natural. A fierce formidable oath was to me the sort of physical relief. I was incapable of talking to God in my despair. To speak frankly, I did not believe in any God then. Of course I knew the Christian faith; but that creed became useless to me. Spiritually I was adrift in chaos.
I had worked honestly and patiently; all to no purpose. I knew of rogues who gained plenty of money; and of knaves who were amassing large fortunes. Their prosperity proved that honesty after all was not the best policy. What should I do then?
The night was bitter cold. My hands were numbed, and I tried to warm them at the oil-lamp my landlady was good enough to allow me, in spite of delayed cash-payments. As I did so, I noticed three letters on the table. One in a long blue envelope, one with the Melbourne postmark, and the third a thick square missive coroneted in red and gold at the back. I turned over all three indifferently. Selecting the one from Australia, balanced it in my hand a moment before opening it. I knew from