What reader will not understand
the agony of remorse produced by such a condition of mind?
The gentleman from Mecklenburgh Square was always with me in the
morning,--always angering me by his hateful presence,--but when the
evening came I could make no struggle towards getting rid of him.
In those days I read a little, and did learn to read French and
Latin. I made myself familiar with Horace, and became acquainted with
the works of our own greatest poets. I had my strong enthusiasms,
and remember throwing out of the window in Northumberland Street,
where I lived, a volume of Johnson's Lives of the Poets, because
he spoke sneeringly of Lycidas. That was Northumberland Street by
the Marylebone Workhouse, on to the back-door of which establishment
my room looked out--a most dreary abode, at which I fancy I must
have almost ruined the good-natured lodging-house keeper by my
constant inability to pay her what I owed.
How I got my daily bread I can hardly remember. But I do remember
that I was often unable to get myself a dinner. Young men generally
now have their meals provided for them. I kept house, as it were.
Every day I had to find myself with the day's food. For my breakfast
I could get some credit at the lodgings, though that credit would
frequently come to an end. But for all that I had often breakfast
to pay day by day; and at your eating-house credit is not given.
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