Crowded Out! and Other Sketches | Page 2

of old black wall, picking there
an ivy leaf, and it knows me not. It is holy ground to me. It is the
mistress whose hand alone I as yet dare to kiss. Some day I shall
possess the whole, and I shall walk with the firm and buoyant tread of
the accepted, delighted lover. Only to-day I am nobody. I am crowded
out. Yet there are moments when the mere joy of being in England, of

being in London, satisfies me. I have seen the sunbeam strike the glory
along the green. I know it is an English sky above me, all change, all
mutability. No steady cloudless sphere of blue but ever-varying glories
of white piled cloud against the gray. Listen to this. I saw a
primrose--the first I had ever seen--in the hedge. They said "Pick it."
But I did not. I, who had written there years ago,--
I never pulled a primrose, I, But could I know that there may lie E'en
now some small or hidden seed, Within, below, an English mead,
Waiting for sun and rain to make A flower of it for my poor sake, I then
could wait till winds should tell, For me there swayed or swung a bell,
Or reared a banner, peered a star, Or curved a cup in woods afar.
I who had written that, I had found my first primrose and I could not
pluck it. I found it fair be sure. I find all England fair. The shimmering
mist and the tender rain, the red wallflower and the ivy green, the
singing birds and the shallow streams--all the country; the blackened
churches, the grass-grown churchyards, the hum of streets the crowded
omnibus, the gorgeous shops,--all the town. God! do I not love it, my
England? Yet not my England yet. Till she proclaim it herself, I am not
hers. I will make her mine. I will write as no man has ever written
about her, for very love of her. I look out to-night from my narrow
window and think how the moonlight falls on Tintern, on Glastonbury,
on Furness. How it falls on the primrose I would not pluck. How it
would like to fall on the tall blue-bells in the wood. I see the lights of
Oxford St. The omnibuses rattle by, the people are going to see Irving,
Wilson Barrett, Ellen Terry. What line, of mine, what bar, what thought
or phrase will turn the silence into song, the copper into gold?--I come
back from the window and sit at the square centre table. It is rickety
and uncomfortable, useless to write on. I kick it. I would kick anything
that came in my way to-night. I am savage. Outside, a French piano is
playing that infernal waltz. A fair subject for kicking if you will. But,
though I would I cannot. What a room! The fire-place is filled with
orange peel and brown paper, cigar stumps and matches. One blind I
pulled down this morning, the other is crooked. The lamp glass is
cracked, my work too. I dare not look at the wall paper nor the pictures.
The carpet I have kicked into holes. I can see it though I can't feel it, it
is so thin. My clothes are lying all about. The soot of London begrimes
every object in the room. I would buy a pot of musk or a silken scarf if

I dared, but how can I?
I must get my bread first and live for beauty after. Everything is refused
though, everything sent back or else dropped as it were into some
bottomless pit or gulf.
Here is my opera. This is my magnum opus, very dear, very clear, very
well preserved. For it is three years old. I scored it nearly altogether, by
her side, Hortense, my dear love, my northern bird! You could flush
under my gaze, you could kindle at my touch, but you were not for me,
you were not for me!--My head droops down, I could go to sleep. But I
must not waste the time in sleep. I will write another story. No; I had
four returned to-day. Ah! Cruel London! To love you so, only that I
may be spurned and thrust aside, ignored, forgotten. But to-morrow I
will try again. I will take the opera to the theatres, I will see the
managers, I will even tell them about myself and about Hortense--but it
will be hard. They do not know me, they do not know Hortense. They
will laugh, they will say "You fool." And I shall be helpless, I shall let
them say it. They will never listen to me, though I play my most
beautiful phrase, for I am nobody. And Hortense, the child with the
royal