“It is a farrago of ill-natured gossip,” he said, as he chucked the fragment over to his wife.
“But you are so clever, Fred,” said his wife. “You can do it without the ill-nature.”
“I will do my best,” he said; “but as for telling them about this woman and that, I cannot do it. In the first place, where am I to learn it all?” Nevertheless, the London letter to the Salford Reformer was not abandoned. Four or five such letters were written, and four or five sovereigns were paid into his little exchequer in return for so much work. Alas! after the four or five there came a kindly-worded message from the editor to say that the articles did not suit. Nothing could be better than Pickering’s language, and his ideas were manly and for the most part good. But the Salford Reformer did not want that sort of thing. The Salford Reformer felt that Fred Pickering was too good for the work required. Fred for twenty-four hours was brokenhearted. After that he was able to resolve that he would take the thing up in the right spirit. He wrote to the editor, saying that he thought that the editor was right. The London letter required was not exactly within the compass of his ability. Then he enclosed a copy of the Braes of Birken, and expressed an opinion that perhaps that might suit a column in the Salford Reformer—one of those columns which were furthest removed from the corner devoted to the London letter. The editor replied that he would publish the Braes of Birken if Pickering wished; but that they never paid for poetry. Anything being better than silence, Pickering permitted the editor to publish the Braes of Birken in the gratuitous manner suggested.
At the end of June, when they had just been twelve months in London, Fred was altogether idle as far as any employment was concerned. There was no going to the theatre now; and it had come to that with him, in fear of his approaching privations, that he would discuss within his own heart the expediency of taking this or that walk with reference to the effect it would have upon his shoes. In those days he strove to work hard, going on with his Milton and his notebook, and sitting for two or three hours a day over heavy volumes in the reading-room at the Museum. When he first resolved upon doing this there had come a difficulty as to the entrance. It was necessary that he should have permission to use the library, and for a while he had not known how to obtain it. Then he had written a letter to a certain gentleman well known in the literary world, an absolute stranger to him, but of whom he had heard a word or two among his newspaper acquaintances, and had asked this gentleman to give him, or to get for him, the permission needed. The gentleman having made certain enquiry, having sent for Pickering and seen him, had done as he was asked, and Fred was free of the library.
“What sort of a man is Mr. Wickham Webb?” Mary asked him, when he returned from the club at which, by Mr. Webb’s appointment, the meeting had taken place.
“According to my ideas he is the only gentleman whom I have met since I have been in London,” said Fred, who in these days was very bitter.
“Was he civil to you?”
“Very civil. He asked me what I was doing up in London, and I told him. He said that literature is the hardest profession in the world. I told him that I thought it was, but at the same time the most noble.”
“What did he say to that?”
“He said that the nobler the task it was always the more difficult; and that, as a rule, it was not well that men should attempt work too difficult for their hands because of its nobility.”
“What did he mean by that, Fred?”
“I knew what he meant very well. He meant to tell me that I had better go and measure ribbons behind a counter; and I don’t know but what he was right.”
“But yet you liked him?”
“Why should I have disliked him for giving me good advice? I liked him because his manner was kind, and because he strove hard to say an unpleasant thing in the pleasantest words that he could use. Besides, it did me good to speak to a gentleman once again.”
Throughout July not a shilling was earned, nor was there any prospect of the earning of a shilling. People were then still in town, but in another fortnight London would have emptied itself of the rich and prosperous. So much Pickering had learned, little as he was qualified to write the London letter for the Salford Reformer. In the last autumn he had complained to his wife that circumstances had compelled him to begin at the wrong period of the year—in the dull months when there was nobody in London who could help him. Now the dull months were coming round again, and he was as far as ever from any help. What was he to do? “You said that Mr. Webb was very civil,” suggested his wife: “could you not write to him and ask him to help us?”
“He is a rich man, and that would be begging,” said Fred.
“I would not ask him for money,” said Mary; “but perhaps he can tell you how you can get employment.”
The letter to Mr. Webb was written with many throes and the destruction of much paper. Fred found it very difficult to choose words which should describe with sufficient force the extreme urgency of his position,
