"My Novel" — Complete

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

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; he 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 receiving-room 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.”

“Two lines only, and I am called—I am called—” Leonard’s frame shook from head to foot, and the veins on his forehead swelled like cords. He could not complete the sentence. It seemed as if an ocean was rolling up through his brain, and roaring in his ears. The doctor saw at a glance that there was physical danger in his state, and hastily and soothingly answered, “Sit down, sit down; calm yourself; you shall know all,—read all; drink this water;” and he poured into a tumbler of the pure liquid a drop or two from a tiny phial.

Leonard obeyed mechanically, for he was no longer able to stand. He closed his eyes, and for a minute or two life seemed to pass from him; then he recovered, and saw the good doctor’s gaze fixed on him with great compassion. He silently stretched forth his hand towards the letter. “Wait a few moments,” said the physician, judiciously, “and hear me meanwhile. It is very unfortunate you should have seen a letter never meant for your eye, and containing allusions to a secret you were never to have known. But if I tell you more, will you promise me, on your word of honour, that you will hold the confidence sacred from Mrs. Fairfield, the Avenels,—from all? I myself am pledged to conceal a secret, which I can only share with you on the same condition.”

“There is nothing,” announced Leonard, indistinctly, and with a bitter smile on his lip,—“nothing, it seems, that I should be proud to boast of. Yes, I promise; the letter, the letter!”

The doctor placed it in Leonard’s right hand, and quietly slipped to the wrist of the left his forefinger and thumb, as physicians are said to do when a victim is stretched on the rack. “Pulse decreasing,” he muttered; “wonderful thing, aconite!” Meanwhile Leonard read as follows, faults in spelling and all:—

DR. MORGAN