The exquisite delight of utterly abandoned extravagance, no counting—anathemas on counting and calculation! If life be not a dream, what is the use of living?
Say what you will, the truth is, we all struggle on in hope of living in a dream some day. This is my dream. Dreadfully, horribly wicked, is it not, in an age that preaches thrift and—twaddle? No joy like waste in London streets; happy waste, imaginative extravagance; to and fro like a butterfly!
Besides, there’s no entertainment in the world like the streets of London on a sunny day or a gas-lit night. The shops, the carriages, the people, the odds and ends of life one sees, the drifting to and fro of folk, the “bits” of existence, glimpses into shadowy corners, the dresses, the women; dear me, where shall we get to? At all events, the fact remains that to anyone with an eye the best entertainment in the world is a lounge in London streets. Theatres, concerts, séances, Albert Halls, museums, galleries, are but set and formal shows; a great weariness, for the most part, and who the deuce would care to go and gaze at them again who could lounge in Piccadilly?
It is well worth a ten-pound note any day in May; fifty pounds sometimes at 1 p.m., merely to look on, I mean, it is worth it; but you can see this living show for nothing. Let the grandees go to the opera; for me, the streets.
So I can’t throw dirt at Raleigh, who often had a hatful of money, and could and did just what seemed pleasant in his sight. But the money went like water, and in order to get further supplies, the idle, good-for-nothing, lazy dog worked like a prime minister with telegrams, letters, newspapers, and so on, worked like a prime minister—at betting. Horse-racing, in short, was the explanation of the memorandum-book, the load of correspondence, and the telegrams, kept flat with a glass of whiskey as a paperweight.
While he wrote, and thought, and reckoned up his chances, a loud refrain of snoring arose from the sofa. It was almost as loud as the boom of the fair, but Raleigh had no nerves. His friend Freddie, becoming oppressed with so much labour, had dropped asleep, leaving his whiskey beside him on the sofa, so that the first time he moved over it went on the carpet. With one long leg stretched out, the other knee up, lying on his back, and his mouth wide open to the ceiling, Freddie was very happy.
Raleigh puffed his clay pipe, sipped, and puffed again. Freddie boomed away on the sofa. The family was in London; Raleigh and Freddie got down here in this way: it happened one night there was a row at a superb bar, Haymarket trail. The “chuckers-out” began their coarse horseplay, and in the general melée Raleigh distinguished himself. Rolled about by the crowd, he chanced to find himself for a moment in a favourable position, and punished one of these gigantic brutes pretty severely.
Though stout and short of breath, Raleigh was strong in the arm, he was “up,” and he hit hard. The fellow’s face was a “picture,” coloured in cardinal. Such an opportunity does not occur twice in a lifetime; Raleigh’s genius seized the opportunity, and he became great. Actium was a trifle to it.
There were mighty men before Agamemnon, and there are mighty men who do not figure in the papers.
Raleigh became at once an anaxandron—a King of Men. The history of his feat spread in ten minutes from one end of midnight London to the other: from the policeman in Waterloo Place to—everywhere. Never was such a stir; the fall of Sebastopol—dear me! I can remember it, look at the flight of time—was nothing to it. They would have chaired him, fêted him, got a band to play him about the place, literally crowned him with laurel. Ave, Caesar! Evoe! Bacchus! But they could not find him.
Raleigh was off with Freddie, who had been in at the death, and was well “blooded.” Hansom to Paddington in the small hours; creep, creep, creep, through the raw morning mist, puff, whistle, broad gauge, and they had vanished.
Raleigh was a man of his age; he lost not a moment; having got the glory, the next thing was to elude the responsibility; and, in short, he slipped out of sight till the hue-and-cry was over, and the excitement of the campaign had subsided.
In case anyone should suppose I approve of midnight battle, I may as well label the account at once: “This is a goak.”
I do not approve of brawls at the bar, but I have set myself the task to describe a bit of human life exactly as it really is, and I can assure you as a honest fact that Raleigh by that lucky knock became a very great man indeed among people as they really are. People as they really are, are not all Greek scholars.
As I don’t wish you to look down upon poor Raleigh too much because he smoked a cutty, and hit a fellow twice as big as himself, and lent his money, and made bets, and drank whiskey, and was altogether wicked, I may as well tell you something in his favour: He was a hero
