Confessions of a Young Man | Page 7

less fortunate circumstances, for even the studio, with its
dissipations--and they were many--was not unserviceable; it developed
the natural man, who educates himself, who allows his mind to grow
and ripen under the sun and wind of modern life, in contradistinction to
the University man, who is fed upon the dust of ages, and after a
formula which has been composed to suit the requirements of the
average human being.
Nor was my reading at this time so limited as might be expected from
the foregoing. The study of Shelley's poetry had led me to read very
nearly all the English lyric poets; Shelley's atheism had led me to read
Kant, Spinoza, Godwin, Darwin, and Mill. So it will be understood that
Shelley not only gave me my first soul, but led all its first flights. But I
do not think that if Shelley had been no more than a poet,
notwithstanding my very genuine love of verse, he would have gained
such influence in my youthful sympathies; but Shelley dreamed in
metaphysics--very thin dreaming if you will; but just such thin
dreaming as I could follow. Was there or was there not a God? And for
many years I could not dismiss as parcel of the world's folly this
question, and I sought a solution, inclining towards atheism, for it was
natural in me to revere nothing, and to oppose the routine of daily
thought. And I was but sixteen when I resolved to tell my mother that I
must decline to believe any longer in a God. She was leaning against
the chimney-piece in the drawing-room. I expected to paralyse the
household with the news; but although a religious woman, my mother
did not seem in the least frightened, she only said, "I am very sorry,
George, it is so." I was deeply shocked at her indifference.

Finding music and atheism in poetry I cared little for novels. Scott
seemed to me on a par with Burke's speeches; that is to say, too
impersonal for my very personal taste. Dickens I knew by heart, and
Bleak House I thought his greatest achievement. Thackeray left no deep
impression on my mind; in no way did he hold my thoughts. He was
not picturesque like Dickens, and I was at that time curiously eager for
some adequate philosophy of life, and his social satire seemed very
small beer indeed. I was really young. I hungered after great truths:
Middlemarch, Adam Bede, The Rise and Influence of Rationalism, The
History of Civilisation, were momentous events in my life. But I loved
life better than books, and very curiously my studies and my pleasures
kept pace, stepping together like a pair of well-trained carriage horses.
While I was waiting for my coach to take a party of tarts and mashers
to the Derby, I would read a chapter of Kant, and I often took the book
away with me in my pocket. And I cultivated with care the
acquaintance of a neighbour who had taken the Globe Theatre for the
purpose of producing Offenbach's operas. Bouquets, stalls, rings,
delighted me. I was not dissipated, but I loved the abnormal. I loved to
spend on scent and toilette knick-knacks as much as would keep a poor
man's family in affluence for ten months; and I smiled at the
fashionable sunlight in the Park, the dusty cavalcades; and I loved to
shock my friends by bowing to those whom I should not bow to. Above
all, the life of the theatres--that life of raw gaslight, whitewashed walls,
of light, doggerel verse, slangy polkas and waltzes--interested me
beyond legitimate measure, so curious and unreal did it seem. I lived at
home, but dined daily at a fashionable restaurant: at half-past eight I
was at the theatre. Nodding familiarly to the doorkeeper, I passed up
the long passage to the stage. Afterwards supper. Cremorne and the
Argyle Rooms were my favourite haunts. My mother suffered, and
expected ruin, for I took no trouble to conceal anything; I boasted of
dissipations. But there was no need to fear; for I was naturally endowed
with a very clear sense of self-preservation; I neither betted nor drank,
nor contracted debts, nor a secret marriage; from a worldly point of
view, I was a model young man indeed; and when I returned home
about four in the morning, I watched the pale moon setting, and
repeating some verses of Shelley, I thought how I should go to Paris
when I was of age, and study painting.

II
At last the day came, and with several trunks and boxes full of clothes,
books, and pictures, I started, accompanied by an English valet, for
Paris and Art.
We all know the great grey and melancholy Gare du Nord at half-past
six in the morning;