obey you. Then, take that thousand a year, and give me two hundred; and I’ll bless you all my days.’ He said nothing; and he did nothing. He was just a fatuous liar. I mocked him: caught him stealing my correspondence—there is his written confession;—and, he wrote these anonymous calumnies in long cherished revenge.” The dreadful lambent voice flickered for a moment;—and more rapidly flashed-on. “I repeat, I never was idle. I did work after work. I designed furniture, and fire-irons. I delineated saints and seraphim, and sinners, chiefly the former: a series of rather interesting and polyonomous devils in a period of desperate revolt. I slaved as a professional photographer, making (from French prints) a set of negatives for lantern-slides of the Holy Land which were advertised as being ‘from original negatives’—‘messing about’ the Catholic Hour elegantly denominates that portion of my purgatory. Well I admit it was messy, and insanitary within the meaning of the act too—but then you see I was working for a Catholic. I did journalism, reported inquests for eighteen pence. I wrote for magazines. I wrote books. I invented a score of things. Experts used to tell me that there was a fortune waiting for me in these inventions: that any capitalist would help me to exploit them. They were small people themselves, these experts—small, in that they were not obliged to pay income tax: they had no capital to invest: but they recommended me, and advised me, to apply to lots of people who had:—gave me their names and addresses, dictated the letters of application which I wrote. I trusted them, for they were ‘business men’ and I knew that I was not of that species. I quieted my repugnance; and I laid invention after invention, scheme after scheme, work after work, before capitalist after capitalist. I was assured that it was correct to do so. I despised and detested myself for doing it. I scoured the round world for a ‘patron.’ These were my ‘begging letters.’—At that time I was totally ignorant of the fact that there are thousands of people who live by inviting patronage; and that most of them really have nothing to be patronized: while the rest are cranks. I knew that I had done such and such a new thing: that I had exhausted myself and my resources in doing it: that my deed was approved by specialists who thoroughly knew the subject. I was very ashamed to ask for help to make my invention profitable: but I was quite honest—generous: I always offered a share in the profits—always. I did not ask for, and I did not expect, something for nothing. I had done so much; and I wanted so little: but I did want that little—for my creditors—for giving ease to some slaves of my acquaintance. I was a fool, a sanguine ignorant abject fool! I never learned by experience. I still kept on. A haggard shabby shy priestly-visaged individual, such as I was, could not hope to win the confidence of men who daily were approached by splendid plausible cadgers. My requests were too diffident, too modest. I made the mistake of appealing to brains rather than to bowels, to reason rather than to sentiment. I wanted hundreds, or thousands—say two: others wanted and got tens and hundreds of thousands. A cotton-waste merchant could not risk fifteen-hundred on my work, although he liked me personally and said that he believed in the value of my inventions: but, at the same time, he cheerfully lost twelve-thousand in a scheme for ‘ventilated boots.’ I myself was wearing ventilated boots, then: but the ventilated-boot man wore resplendent patent leather. Cardinals’ secretaries could live at the rate of two-thousand-two-hundred-and-ninety pounds a year and borrow three-thousand-and-sixty pounds, on a salary of two-hundred pounds a year; and they could become bankrupt for four-thousand-one-hundred-and-twenty pounds with one-hundred-and-eighty pounds worth of assets. But I—I could not get my due from that man, one of whose secretaries wrote his business to me on the franked notepaper of the late Queen of England’s Treasury: while the other, the bankrupt, gave me a winter of starvation, because his lord had altered his mind, quoth he, about the job on which I was working, and had determined to put his money into a cathedral. No. I never accomplished the whole art and mystery of mendicity. I perfectly could see what was required of him who would be a successful swindler. I was not that one. I was playing another kind of game—unfortunately an honest one. Take that ‘unfortunately’ for irony, please. I mean—but you perfectly know what I mean.—I made nothing of my inventions. By degrees, I had the mortification of seeing others arrive at the discovery which I had made years before. They contrived to turn it into gold and fame. That way, one after another of my inventions became nulled to me. I think I am right in saying that there are only four remaining at the present moment. Finance them now? Engage in trade like a monk or a nun? No. No. I shall give them to—that doesn’t matter. It shall be done today.—Idle? Idle? When I think of all the violently fatuous frantic excellent things I’ve done in the course of my struggles for an honest living—ouf! It makes me sick! Oh yes, I have been helped. God forgive me for bedaubing myself with that indelible blur. I had not the courage to sit-down and fold my hands and die. A brute once said that he supposed that I looked upon the world as mine oyster. I did not. I worked; and I wanted my wages. When they were withheld, people encouraged me to hope on; and offered me a guinea for the present. I took the filthy guinea. God forgive me for becoming so degraded. Not because I wanted to take it: but because they said that they would be so pained at my refusal. But one can’t pay all one’s
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