By my troth, Cony, if there were a thousand boys, thou would’st spoil them all with taking their parts.         
          THE KNIGHT OF THE BURNING PESTLE.

AT the age of twenty-four Frederic was earning twenty-five shillings a week as a managing clerk in Mr. Starkey’s office in Hanging Row. He was fairly punctual in the morning, having hired Minna to rout him out of bed at eight o’clock, and he would lounge through the morning until one o’clock when he would disappear for two hours for lunch and coffee and dominoes in a smoky cellar called the Mecca Café. In the afternoon he would work furiously from three to five so as to have something to show for his day, and in the evening he would come to life. A sort of swagger would come into his bearing and a pinkish tinge would come into his pale cheeks and a new light into his blue-green eyes. He had discovered that in winter his light tenor voice could be made to earn about thirty shillings a week, and together with a spotty-faced youth in his office who sang comic songs (with patter) he went up and down our town and district giving “I’ll Sing Thee Songs of Araby” and “To Anthea” and “There is a Lady Passing By,” and winning much applause which invariably went to his head and made him very drunk. He sang under an assumed name, and no one at home knew what he was doing except Minna, whom he bribed with cigarettes to hold her peace. (She used to lock herself in the bath-room and smoke them out of the window.) When occasionally his mother complained that he was never at home in the evening he used to say that he was rehearsing. At intervals he used to       [Pg 51]take part in private theatricals with the spotty-faced youth or other of his friends. The pieces generally given were the farces of Madison Morton, or The Blind Beggars, or some amateur musical play. There was a Gentlemen’s Musical Society which had a little hall in Oswald Street in the centre of our town. Frederic and the spotty-faced youth were members, though the Society had fallen on evil days and its entertainments had become rather broad. For the most part they were smoking-concerts, not unlike the Caves of Harmony that used to be in London, but the air was purified occasionally by a Ladies’ Night, when the lions roared as gently as any sucking dove, and gave innocuous theatrical entertainments to which the members brought their daughters. Frederic became a shining light in the performances, and the members’ daughters fell in love with him and wrote him ridiculous letters of admiration, which he gulped down without blinking.

It was at the Gentlemen’s Concert Hall that he first met James Lawrie, the dramatic critic of our weekly newspaper who wrote under the name of “Snug,” and had some public reputation as a writer of elegant poetry, and an immense fame among journalists and actors and theatrical musicians and painters as a composer of bawdy verses. This man was a Scotsman, a hard drinker, and he was said to know every verse that Robert Burns ever wrote by heart, and also to have many poems that had never been printed. He used to write notices of the little performances in the Gentlemen’s Concert Hall, and, as he could be very scathing, the actors used to fawn upon him and flatter him. The spotty-faced youth introduced him to Frederic one night, and the old man—he was not above fifty-five, but he had always been Old Lawrie—shook him warmly by the hand and said:

“I’m proud to meet your father’s son, sir.”

That rather staggered Frederic, to whom it had never occurred that his father might be admirable. Old Lawrie saw that he was a little taken aback and he scowled and went on:

“Come, come! Not ashamed of your father, are you, [Pg 52]heh? My sons are, but then my sons are respectable. That’s what’s the matter with them, they’re respectable and safe. Safe’s a good word for a gag. You can bring your lips together on it hard.”

“I was at school in France,” replied Frederic with a flush of timidity under his paint. He had just come from the dress-rehearsal on the stage, the play being Still Waters Run Deep.

“If you like France,” said Old Lawrie, “you won’t like this cursed hole. You’ll die in it. I’ve never been to France myself, but I’ve read their books. They pull everything to bits with their brains. Nothing left. They’re a better lot than we are. Got no morals, but who has? We pretend to have ’em. They don’t. Know your Burns? It’s in print, so I see no reason why I shouldn’t speak it:

    O Lord! yestreen, Thou ken, wi’ Meg—

    Thy pardon I sincerely beg,

    O may it ne’er be a livin’ plague

    To my dishonour,

    An’ I’ll ne’er lift a lawless leg

    Again upon her.

    Maybe Thou lets the fleshly thorn

    Beset thy servant e’en and morn,

    Lest he owre high and proud should turn

    ’Cause he’s sae gifted:

    If sae, Thy hand maun e’en be borne,

    Until Thou lift it.

    But, Lord, remember me and mine

    Wi’ mercies temp’ral and divine

    That I for fear and grace may shine

    Excell’d by nane,

    An’ a’ the glory shall be Thine,

    Amen, Amen.

Old Lawrie was a fine man as he declaimed the verses. His eyes flashed and his voice came big from his chest, and when he had done he turned to Frederic and said:

“That’s Burns, and out of Shakespeare there isna a healthier spirit in the world. Burns and Shakespeare—both [Pg 53]of ’em poor men and straight from the earth, and ’ll give ye all the cultured dandies in the world for a farthing gift. So you’re playing at play-acting, young man? That’s what nine-tenths the world is for ever doing in its daily life. They ca’ me a disgusting old man, but they should hear what I ca’ them when my tongue’s loosed and my mind’s eyes seeing visions. I live in Hell, but I’ve a Heaven in my brain. . . . Your father’s a good man to go his own way with the dirty Lutherans and the filthy Puritans yelping at his heels. You’ll not be going in for the professional play-acting?”

“No,” said Frederic. “I sing.”

Old Lawrie clapped his old silk hat on his head, took his blackthorn stick in his hand and gave a shout of laughter. He patted Frederic on the shoulder, pursed his lips and hummed through them strangely and vaguely as though he were turning over a morsel of music on his tongue, and then he broke into verse and said:

    O youth it is a pretty thing,

    A wild rose in the bud.

    But it must die with the passing Spring

    All trampled in the mud.

    We’ve heavy feet in our town,

    Rough shod with iron bands.

    Virginity goes toppling down

    Befouled with loutish hands.

    O Spring is smoked in our town,

    And life’s a dirty scrum,

    The angels weep to see God’s frown

    And we make Hell to hum.

He turned away after this impromptu and joined a bibulous-looking individual with white hair and an enormous face, Joshua Yeo, his editor, and the nearest approach to a friend that he had.

Frederic turned to the spotty-faced youth and found him grinning vacantly.

“Quite balmy,” said the spotty-faced youth.

“I think he’s splendid,” returned Frederic, amazed at his own enthusiasm............