“I think it right to say that I myself am perfectly satisfied on all those points,” said Semphill. “I’ve read the calumnies—and I call them dastardly calumnies—in the light of my own knowledge of the facts; and I can only say that the worst thing which they’ve alleged against you is that you’ve been used to go-about bilking landlords. All the rest is excusable, not to say harmless.”
“Gracious Heavens!” George exclaimed in a rictus of rage. “Do you suppose that a man of my description goes-about bilking landlords for the sake of the fun of the thing? It’s no such deliriously jolly work, I can tell you. However, I’ve never bilked any landlords if that’s what you want to know. Never. They saw that I worked like nineteen galley-slaves; and they offered to trust me. I voluminously explained my exact position and prospects to them. I was foolish enough to believe that you Catholics would keep your promises and pay me for the work which I did at your orders. So I accepted credit. I wish I had died. When at length I was defrauded, legally, mind!—for, as my employers were Catholics and sometimes priests, I trusted to their honour, and obtained no stamped agreement:—when I was defrauded of my wages, my landlords lost patience (poor things—I don’t blame them,) harried me, reproached me, at length turned me out, and so prevented me from paying them. I dug myself out of the gutter with these bare hands again and again; and started anew to earn enough to pay my debts. Debts! They never were off my chest for twenty years, no matter what these vile liars say. Debts! They say that I incurred them for luxurious living, unjustifiably——”
His passionate voice subsided: he became frightfully cool and tense and terse, analytical, quite merciless to himself. Their Eminencies never before had seen a surgical knife at work in a human heart and brain. They sat all vigilant and attentive, as self-dissection proceeded. “They say that I gorged myself with sumptuous banquets at grand hotels. Once, after several days’ absolute starvation, I got a long earned guinea; and I went and had an omelette and a bed at a place which called itself a grand hotel. It wasn’t particularly grand in the ordinary sense of the term; and my entertainment there cost me no more than it would have cost me elsewhere, and it was infinitely cleaner and tastier. They say that I ate daintily, and had elaborate dishes made from a cookery book of my own. The recipes, (there may have been a score of them,) were cut-out of a penny weekly, current among the working classes. The dishes were lentils, carrots, anything that was cheapest, cleanest, easiest, and most filling—nourishing—at the price. Each dish cost something under a penny; and I sometimes had one each day. As I was living on credit, I tried to injure no one but myself. That’s the story of my luxurious living. Let me add though that I was extravagant, in proportion to my means, in one thing. Whenever I earned a little bit, I reserved some of it for apparatus conducing to personal cleanliness, soap, baths, tooth-things, and so on. I’m not a bit ashamed of that. Why did I use credit? Because it was offered: because I hoped: because—— That I did not abuse it you may see, actually see, by my style of living,—here are the receipted bills;—and by the number and quantity and quality of the works of my hands. I never was idle. I worked at one thing after another. The Catholic Hour admits my skill; and mispresents that as a crime. At the same time, I myself don’t claim my indefatigability as a virtue. Nothing of the kind. It’s something lower than that. It’s comical to say it: but my indefatigability was nothing but a purely selfish pose, put-on solely to make philanthropists look unspeakably silly, to give the lie direct to all their idiotic iniquitous shibboleths. It wasn’t that I couldn’t stop working: but that I wouldn’t. The fact is that I long, I burn, I yearn, I thirst, I most earnestly desire, to do absolutely nothing. I am so tired. I have such a genius for elaborate repose. But convention always alleges idleness, or drunkenness, or lechery, or luxury, to be the causa causans of scoundrelism and of poverty. That’s a specimen of the ‘Eidola Specus,’ the systematizing spirit which damns half the world. People never stop to think that there may be other causes—that men of parts become rakes, or scoundrels, or paupers, for lack of opportunity to live decently and cleanly. Look at François Villon, and Christopher Marlowe, and Sir Richard Steele, and Leo di Giovanni, and heaps of others. Well: I resolutely determined that you never righteously should allege those things of me. Simply to deprive you of that excuse for your failure to do your duty to your neighbour—simply to deprive you of the chance of classifying me among the ruck which your neglect has made—I courted semi-starvation and starvation, I scrupulously avoided drink, I hardly ever even spoke civilly to a woman; and I laboured like a driven slave. No: I never was idle. But I was a most abject fool. I used to think that this diligent ascetic life eventually would pay me best. I made the mistake of omitting to give its due importance to the word ‘own’ in the adage ‘Virtue is its own reward.’ I had no other reward, except my unwillingly cultivated but altogether undeniable virtue. A diabolic brute once said to me ‘If I had your brains I would be earning a thousand a year.’ I replied ‘Take them: tell me what to do: give me orders, and I implicitly will 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 m
y 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 note-paper 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 to-day.—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 debts, and lead a godly righteous sober life for ever after on a guinea. I was offered help: but help in teaspoonfuls: just enough to keep me alive and chained in the mire: never enough to enable me to raise myself out of it. I asked for work, and they gave me a guinea,—and a tacit request to go and agonize elsewhere. My weakness, my fault was that I did not die, murdered at Maryvale, at St. Andrew’s College. The normal man, treated as I was ill-treated, would have made no bones whatever about doing so. But I was abnormal. I took help, when it was offered gently. I’m thankful to say that I flung it back when it was offered charitably, as the Bishop of Claughton offered it, and Monsignor—you know whom I mean, Talacryn,—and John Newcastle of the Weekly Tabule. I’ll tell you about the last. He said that, being anxious to do me a good turn, he had deposited ten pounds with a printer-man, who would be a kind friend to me, and would consult me as to how that sum could be expended in procuring permanent employment for me. I took seven specimens of my handicraft to that printer-man. He admired them: offered me a loan of five pounds on their security. With that, I fulfilled a temporary engagement. Then I consulted the printer-man, the ‘kind friend.’ He proposed to give me a new suit of clothes, (I was to do without shirts or socks), to accept my services at no salary, and to teach me the business of a printer’s reader for three months; and, then, to recommend me for a situation as reader to some other printer. But, I said, why waste three months in learning a new trade when I already had four trades at my fingers’ ends? But, I said, what was I to live on during those three months? But, I said, what certainty was there at the end of those three months? But, he said, that he would ‘have none of’ my ‘lip, for’ he ‘knew all’ my ‘capers’; and he bade me begone and take away my drawings. Those were ruined: he had let them lie on his dirty office floor for months. Oh I admit that I have been helped—quite brutally and quite uselessly. Helped? Yes. Once, when they told me at the hospital that I was on the verge of a nervous collapse, a Jesuit offered to help me. He would procure my admission to a certain House of Rest, if I would consent to go there. By the Mercy of God I remembered that it was a licensed madhouse, where they imprisoned you by force and tortured you. Fact! There had been a fearful disclosure of their methods in the P. M. G. Well: I refused to go. Rather than add that brand to what I had incurred through being Catholic, I made an effort of will; and contrived to escape that danger: contrived to recover my nerves; and I continued my battle.—Regarding my pseudonyms—my numerous pseudonyms—think of this: I was a tonsured clerk, intending to persist in my Divine Vocation, but forced for a time, to engage in secular pursuits both to earn my living and to pay my debts. I had a shuddering repugnance from associating my name, the name by which I certainly some day should be known in the priesthood, with these secular pursuits. I think that was rather absurd: but I am quite sure that it was not dishonourable. However, for that reason I adopted pseudonyms. I took advice about adopting them: for, in those days, I used to take advice about everything, not being man enough to act upon my own responsibility. Also, the idea of using pseudonyms was suggested to me; and the first one was selected for me. As time went on, and Catholic malfeasance drove me from one trade to another—-for you know—Talacryn—Carvale—Semphill—Sterling—that two excellent priests declared in so many words that they would prevent me from ever earning a living—legal assassination, you see definitely was contemplated—I say as Catholic malfeasance drove me from one trade, I invented another, and another; and I carried on each of these under a separate pseudonym. In fact I split up my personality. As Rose I was a tonsured clerk: as King Clement, I wrote and painted and photographed: as Austin White, I designed decorations: as Francis Engle, I did journalism. There were four of me at least. I always have thought it so inexplicable that none of the authorities—you, Talacryn, with your pretended confidence in me and your majestic immobility towards me,—that none of you ever realized the tremendous amount of energy which was being expended, misdirected, if you like. Certainly no one of you ever made a practical attempt to direct that energy. I was a like a wild colt careering round and round a large meadow. You all looked on and sneered ‘Erratic!’ Of course I was erratic, for you all did your very best, by stolidity, hints, insinuations, commands, to create obstacles over which I had to jump, through which I had to tear a way; and there was no one to bit and bridle me, to ride me, and to share his couch with me. And of course my pseudonymity has been misunderstood by the stupid, as well as mispresented by the invidious. Most people have only half developed their single personalities. That a man should split his into four and more; and should develop each separately and perfectly, was so abnormal that many normals failed to understand it. So when ‘false pretences’ and similar shibboleths were shrieked, they also took alarm and howled. But, there were no false pretences. I told my name to everyone whom it concerned. I am not the only person who has traded under pseudonyms or technikryms. Take, for example, the man whose shop I am said to have offered to buy. He himself used a trade-name. He begged for my acquaintance when I was openly living as a tonsured clerk, about a couple of years before my first pseudonym even was thought of. Take, for another example, those priests, Fr. Aleck of Beal, and the Order of Divine Love, who are alleged to have ‘charitably maintained’ me. By the way, they never did that. They always were paid for my entertainment, in hard coin, and their own price—always. And the Fathers of Divine Love refused me shelter for one night in 1892 at the very time when they are said to have ‘charitably maintained’ me. They did suggest a common lodging-house at fourpence, though; and I flung back the suggestion in their faces and walked the streets all night. But all these people knew all about me and my pseudonyms. In fact, the very priest who suggested the common lodging-house, was the man on whose advice
I adopted my first pseudonym. It was invented by an old lady who chose to call herself my grandmother: she was that priest’s patron and penitent. It was approved by him and adopted by me. And there you have the blind and naked truth on that point. It now is pretended that ‘King Clement’ was a jesuitical machiavellian device of mine, implying royalty, dominions, wealth, and interminable nonsense. I think that the pretension is due to malice and imbecillity. It is malignant now: but I firmly believe that it began by being imbecile. I confess that the name, taken together with my domineering manner, my pedantic diction, my austere and (shall I say) exclusive habit, was liable to misconstruction by the low coarse half-educated uncultured boors among whom I lived. It’s an example of the ‘Eidola Fori,’ the strange power of words and phrases over the mind. I think it really was believed, in some vague way, that I was an exiled sovereign or some rot of that sort. I believe that I perceived it; and laughed to myself about it. But I did my best to disabuse the fools of their foolery. That made things worse. Liars themselves, they could not conceive of a man speaking truth to his own detriment. My disclaimer was taken for a lie; and they honoured me the more for it; and chuckled at the thought of their own perspicacity:—that is to say, when what I said was intelligible to them. You see I used to be a great talker. I have had many experiences; and I used freely to talk of them. It amused and instructed; and I like to amuse and to instruct. You will understand that my voice and my manner of speech did not resemble the voice and the manner of speech of the ruffians with whom I worked and lived. Live as poorly as I would, dress as shabbily as I would, the moment I opened my mouth I was discovered to be different to those people. They perceived it; and I never could disguise my speech. Also, I’m quite sure that they could not understand my speech—follow my argument. I used words which were strange to them to express ideas unimagined by them, while their half-developed minds were more than half occupied, not in listening to me but, in contemplating me, and in trying to form their particular idea of me by the aid of the ‘Vulgi sensus imperiti,’ the imperfection of undisciplined senses, at their disposal. I called that Imbecillity. Perhaps Ignorance is the apter term. The Malice is to be found among people who ought to know better: people to whom I have told the exact truth about myself, exact at the time of telling: people, who being possessed by a desire to think evil, think evil: people who read between, instead of on, the lines: people, prone to folly, whom I have not helped to avoid their predilection. I tried to be simple and plain, to sulk (if you like) in my own corner by myself. It was no good. Anyhow, I told no tales of realms or wealth as mine. I made no false pretences. I myself was grossly deceived: barbarously man-woman-and-priest-handled. I was foolish to try to explain myself. I was foolish to try to work with, to live with, to equal myself in every respect with, verminous persons within the meaning of the act. I ought to have died. But I did not die. That is all. It is not half. Now you know. Make what you please of it.”
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