Born in Exile (17 page)

His latch-key admitted him to total darkness, but he moved
forward with the confidence of long use. He softly ascended two
flights of stairs, opened a door, struck a match, and found himself
in a comfortable sitting-room, soon illumined by a reading-lamp.
The atmosphere, as throughout the house, was strongly redolent of
dried simples. Anyone acquainted with the characteristics of
furnished lodgings must have surmised that Peak dwelt here among
his own moveables, and was indebted to the occupier of the premises
for bare walls alone; the tables and chairs, though plain enough,
were such as civilisation permits; and though there were no
pictures, sundry ornaments here and there made strong denial of
lodging-house affinity. It was at once laboratory, study, and
dwelling-room. Two large cabinets, something the worse for
transportation, alone formed a link between this abode and the old
home at Twybridge. Books were not numerous, and a good microscope
seemed to be the only scientific instrument of much importance. On
door-pegs hung a knapsack, a botanist's vasculum, and a geologist's
wallet.

A round table was spread with the materials of supper, and here
again an experienced lodger must have bestowed contemplative
scrutiny, for no hand of common landlady declared itself in the
arrangement. The cloth was spotless, the utensils tasteful and
carefully disposed. In a bowl lay an appetising salad, ready for
mingling; a fragment of Camembert cheese was relieved upon a
setting of green leafage; a bottle of ale, with adjacent corkscrew,
stood beside the plate; the very loaf seemed to come from no
ordinary baker's, or was made to look better than its kin by the
fringed white cloth in which it nestled.

The custom of four years had accustomed Peak to take these
things as a matter of course, yet he would readily have admitted
that they were extraordinary enough. Indeed, he even now
occasionally contrasted this state of comfort with the hateful
experiences of his first six years in London. The subject of
lodgings was one of those on which (often intemperate of speech) he
spoke least temperately. For six years he had shifted from quarter
to quarter, from house to house, driven away each time by the
hateful contact of vulgarity in every form,—by foulness and
dishonesty, by lying, slandering, quarrelling, by drunkenness, by
brutal vice,—by all abominations that distinguish the
lodging-letter of the metropolis. Obliged to practise extreme
economy, he could not take refuge among self-respecting people, or
at all events had no luck in endeavouring to find such among the
poorer working-class. To a man of Godwin's idiosyncrasy the London
poor were of necessity abominable, and it anguished him to be
forced to live among them.

Rescue came at last, and in a very unexpected way. Resident in
the more open part of Bermondsey (winter mornings made a long
journey to Rotherhithe intolerable), he happened to walk one day as
far as Peckham Rye, and was there attracted by the shop window of a
herbalist. He entered to make a purchase, and got into conversation
with Mr. Button, a middle-aged man of bright intelligence and more
reading than could be expected. The herbalist led his customer to
an upper room, in which were stored sundry curiosities, and
happened casually to say that he was desirous of finding a lodger
for two superfluous chambers. Peak's inquiries led to his seeing
Mrs. Button, whom he found to be a Frenchwoman of very pleasing
appearance; she spoke fluent French-English, anything but
disagreeable to an ear constantly tormented by the London
vernacular. After short reflection he decided to take and furnish
the rooms. It proved a most fortunate step, for he lived (after the
outlay for furniture) at much less expense than theretofore, and in
comparative luxury. Cleanliness, neatness, good taste by no means
exhausted Mrs. Button's virtues; her cooking seemed to the lodger
of incredible perfection, and the infinite goodwill with which he
was tended made strange contrast with the base usage he had
commonly experienced.

In these ten years he had paid but four visits to Twybridge,
each of brief duration. Naturally there were changes among his
kinsfolk: Charlotte, after an engagement which prolonged itself to
the fifth twelvemonth, had become Mrs. Cusse, and her husband now
had a draper's shop of his own, with two children already born into
the world of draperdom. Oliver, twice fruitlessly affianced, had at
length (when six-and-twenty) wedded a young person whom his mother
and his aunt both regarded as a most undesirable connection, the
daughter (aged thirty-two) of a man who was drinking himself to
death on such money as he could earn by casual reporting for a
Twybridge newspaper. Mrs. Peak the elder now abode with her sister
at the millinery shop, and saw little of her two married children.
With Oliver and Charlotte their brother had no sympathy, and
affected none; he never wrote to them, nor they to him; but years
had strengthened his regard for his mother, and with her he had
fairly regular correspondence. Gladly he would have seen her more
often, but the air of shopkeeping he was compelled to breathe when
he visited Twybridge nauseated and repelled him. He recognised the
suitability both of Oliver and Charlotte for the positions to which
life had consigned them—they suffered from no profitless
aspiration; but it seemed to him a just cause of quarrel with fate
that his kindred should thus have relapsed, instead of bettering
the rank their father had bequeathed to them. He would not avow to
such friends as Moxey and Earwaker the social standing of his only
recognised relatives.

As for the unrecognised, he had long ago heard with some
satisfaction that Andrew Peak, having ultimately failed in his
Kingsmill venture, returned to London. Encounter with the fatal
Andrew had been spared him ever since that decisive day when Master
Jowey Peak recited from Coleridge and displayed his etymological
genius.

For himself, he had earned daily bread, and something more; he
had studied in desultory fashion; he had seen a good deal of the
British Isles and had visited Paris. The result of it all was
gnawing discontent, intervals of furious revolt, periods of black
despair.

He had achieved nothing, and he was alone.

Young still, to be sure; at twenty-nine it is too early to
abandon ambitions which are supported by force of brain and of
will. But circumstances must needs help if the desires of his soul
were to be attained. On first coming to London, received with all
friendliness by Christian Moxey, he had imagined that it only
depended upon himself to find admission before long to congenial
society—by which he then understood the companionship of
intelligent and aspiring young men. Christian, however, had himself
no such circle, and knew that the awkward lad from Twybridge could
not associate with the one or two wealthy families to which he
could have presented him. The School of Mines was only technically
useful; it helped Godwin to get his place with Bates & Sons,
but supplied no friendships. In the third year, Moxey inherited
means and left the chemical works for continental travel.

By tormenting attraction Godwin was often led to walk in the
wealthy districts of London. Why was no one of these doors open to
him? There were his equals; not in the mean streets where he dwelt.
There were the men of culture and capacity, the women of exquisite
person and exalted mind. Was he the inferior of such people? By
heaven, no!

He chanced once to be in Hyde Park on the occasion of some
public ceremony, and was brought to pause at the edge of a gaping
plebeian crowd, drawn up to witness the passing of aristocratic
vehicles. Close in front of him an open carriage came to a stop; in
it sat, or rather reclined, two ladies, old and young. Upon this
picture Godwin fixed his eyes with the intensity of fascination;
his memory never lost the impress of these ladies' faces. Nothing
very noteworthy about them; but to Godwin they conveyed a
passionate perception of all that is implied in social superiority.
Here he stood, one of the multitude, of the herd; shoulder to
shoulder with boors and pick-pockets; and within reach of his hand
reposed those two ladies, in Olympian calm, seeming unaware even of
the existence of the throng. Now they exchanged a word; now they
smiled to each other. How delicate was the moving of their lips!
How fine must be their enunciation! On the box sat an old coachman
and a young footman; they too were splendidly impassive, scornful
of the multitudinous gaze.—The block was relieved, and on the
carriage rolled.

They were his equals, those ladies, merely his equals. With such
as they he should by right of nature associate.

In his rebellion, he could not hate them. He hated the
malodorous rabble who stared insolently at them and who envied
their immeasurable remoteness. Of mere wealth he thought not; might
he only be recognised by the gentle of birth and breeding for what
he really was, and be rescued from the promiscuity of the
vulgar!

Yet at this time he was drawn into connection with the movement
of popular Radicalism which revolts against religious
respectability. Inherited antipathy to all conventional forms of
faith outweighed his other prejudices so far as to induce him to
write savage papers for
The Liberator
. Personal contact with
artisan freethinkers was disgusting to him. From the meeting of
emancipated workmen he went away with scorn and detestation in his
heart; but in the quiet of his lodgings he could sit down to aid
their propaganda. One explanation of this inconsistency lay in the
fact that no other channel was open to his literary impulses. Pure
science could not serve him, for he had no original results to
announce. Pure literature seemed beyond his scope, yet he was
constantly endeavouring to express himself. He burned with the
desire of fame, and saw no hope of achieving it save as an author.
The Liberator
would serve him as a first step. In time he
might get foothold in the monthly reviews, and see his name side by
side with those of the leaders of thought.

Occasions, of course, offered when he might have extended his
acquaintance, but they were never of a kind that he cared to use;
at best they would only have admitted him to the homes of decent,
semi-educated families, and for such society he was altogether
unfitted. The licence of the streets but seldom allured him. After
his twenty-fourth year he was proof against the decoys of venal
pleasure, and lived a life of asceticism exceedingly rare in young
and lonely men. When Christian Moxey returned to London and took
the house at Notting Hill, which he henceforth occupied together
with his sister, a possibility of social intercourse at length
appeared. Indeed it was a substantial gain to sit from time to time
at a civilised table, and to converse amid graceful surroundings
with people who at all events followed the intellectual current of
the day. Careless hitherto of his personal appearance, he now
cultivated an elegance of attire in conformity with his
aristocratic instincts, and this habit became fixed. When next he
visited Twybridge, the change in his appearance was generally
remarked. Mrs. Peak naturally understood it as a significant result
of his intercourse with Miss Moxey, of whom, as it seemed to her,
he spoke with singular reticence.

But Marcella had no charm for Godwin's imagination,
notwithstanding that he presently suspected a warmth of interest on
her side which he was far from consciously encouraging. Nor did he
find among his friends any man or woman for whose acquaintance he
greatly cared. The Moxeys had a very small circle, consisting
chiefly of intellectual inferiors. Christian was too indolent to
make a figure in society, and his sister suffered from
peculiarities of mind and temperament which made it as difficult
for her as for Peak himself to form intimate friendships.

When chance encounter brought him into connection with Earwaker,
the revival of bygone things was at first doubtfully pleasant.
Earwaker himself, remarkably developed and become a very
interesting man, was as welcome an associate as he could have
found, but it cost him some effort to dismiss the thought of Andrew
Peak's eating-house, and to accept the friendly tact with which the
journalist avoided all hint of unpleasant memories. That Earwaker
should refrain from a single question concerning that abrupt
disappearance, nearly ten years ago, sufficiently declared his
knowledge of the unspeakable cause, a reflection which often made
Godwin writhe. However, this difficulty was overcome, and the two
met very frequently. For several weeks Godwin enjoyed better
spirits than he had known since the first excitement of his life in
London faded away.

One result was easily foreseen. His mind grew busy with literary
projects, many that he had long contemplated and some that were
new. Once more he aimed at contributing to the 'advanced' reviews,
and sketched out several papers of sociological tenor. None of
these were written. As soon as he sat down to deliberate
composition, a sense of his deficiencies embarrassed him. Godwin's
self-confidence had nothing in common with the conceit which rests
on imaginary strength. Power there was in him; of that he could not
but be conscious: its true direction he had not yet learned. Defect
of knowledge, lack of pen-practice, confusion and contradictoriness
of aims, instability of conviction,—these faults he recognised in
himself at every moment of inward scrutiny.

On his table this evening lay a library volume which he had of
late been reading, a book which had sprung into enormous
popularity. It was called
Spiritual Aspects of Evolution
,
and undertook, with confidence characteristic of its kind, to
reconcile the latest results of science with the dogmas of Oriental
religion. This work was in his mind when he spoke so vehemently at
Moxey's; already he had trembled with an impulse to write something
on the subject, and during his journey home a possible essay had
begun to shape itself. Late as was the hour he could not prepare
for sleep. His brain throbbed with a congestion of thought; he
struggled to make clear the lines on which his satire might direct
itself. By two o'clock he had flung down on paper a conglomerate of
burning ideas, and thus relieved he at length went to bed.