The Roll-Call | Page 4

simply as a by-product. He had to be a
great architect, and--equally important--he had to be publicly
recognized as a great architect, and recognition could not come without
money. For him, the entire created universe was the means to his end.
He would not use it unlawfully, but he would use it. He was using it, as
well as he yet knew how, and with an independence that was as
complete as it was unconscious. In regard to matters upon which his
instinct had not suggested a course of action, George was always ready
enough to be taught; indeed his respect for an expert was truly
deferential. But when his instinct had begun to operate he would
consult nobody and consider nobody, being deeply sure that infallible
wisdom had been granted to him. (Nor did experience seem to teach
him.) Thus, in the affair of a London lodging, though he was still two
years from his majority and had no resources save the purse of his
stepfather, Edwin Clayhanger, he had decided to leave the Orgreaves

without asking or even informing his parents. In his next letter home he
would no doubt inform them, casually, of what he meant to do or
actually had done, and if objections followed he would honestly resent
them.
A characteristic example of his independence had happened when at
the unripe age of seventeen he left the Five Towns for London. Upon
his mother's marriage to Edwin Clayhanger his own name had been
informally changed for him to Clayhanger. But a few days before the
day of departure he had announced that, as Clayhanger was not his own
name and that he preferred his own name, he should henceforth be
known as 'Cannon,' his father's name. He did not invite discussion. Mr.
Clayhanger had thereupon said to him privately and as one man of the
world to another: "But you aren't really entitled to the name Cannon,
sonny." "Why?" "Because your father was what's commonly known as
a bigamist, and his marriage with your mother was not legal. I thought
I'd take this opportunity of telling you. You needn't say anything to
your mother--unless of course you feel you must." To which George
had replied: "No, I won't. But if Cannon was my father's name I think
I'll have it all the same." And he did have it. The bigamy of his father
did not apparently affect him. Upon further inquiry he learnt that his
father might be alive or might be dead, but that if alive he was in
America.
The few words from Mr. Enwright about Chelsea had sufficed to turn
Chelsea into Elysium, Paradise, almost into Paris. No other quarter of
London was inhabitable by a rising architect. As soon as Haim had
gone George had begun to look up Chelsea in the office library, and as
Mr. Enwright happened to be an active member of the Society for the
Survey of the Memorials of Greater London, the library served him
well. In an hour and a half he had absorbed something of the historical
topography of Chelsea. He knew that the Fulham Road upon which he
was now walking was a boundary of Chelsea. He knew that the Queen's
Elm public-house had its name from the tradition that Elizabeth had
once sheltered from a shower beneath an elm tree which stood at that
very corner. He knew that Chelsea had been a 'village of palaces,' and
what was the function of the Thames in the magnificent life of that

village. The secret residence of Turner in Chelsea, under the strange
alias of Admiral Booth, excited George's admiration; he liked the idea
of hidden retreats and splendid, fanciful pseudonyms. But the
master-figure of Chelsea for George was Sir Thomas More. He could
see Sir Thomas More walking in his majestic garden by the river with
the King's arm round his neck, and Holbein close by, and respectful
august prelates and a nagging wife in the background. And he could see
Sir Thomas More taking his barge for the last journey to the Tower,
and Sir Thomas More's daughter coming back in the same barge with
her father's head on board. Curious! He envied Sir Thomas More.
"Darned bad tower for a village of palaces!" he thought, not of the
Tower of London, but of the tower of the Workhouse which he was
now approaching. He thought he could design an incomparably better
tower than that. And he saw himself in the future, the architect of vast
monuments, strolling in a grand garden of his own at evening with
other distinguished and witty persons.
But there were high-sounding names in the history of Chelsea besides
those of More and Turner. Not names of people! Cremorne and
Ranelagh! Cremorne to the west and Ranelagh to the