The Three Clerks | Page 9

such good luck as this could befall him, at any rate until he had gone
through many years of servile labour. His sister also, though sisterly
enough in her disposition to him, did not quite like having a brother
employed as a clerk in her husband's office. They therefore put their
heads together, and, as the Tudors had good family connexions in
England, a nomination in the Weights and Measures was procured.
The nomination was procured; but when it was ascertained how very
short a way this went towards the attainment of the desired object, and
how much more difficult it was to obtain Mr. Hardlines' approval than

the Board's favour, young Tudor's friends despaired, and recommended
him to abandon the idea, as, should he throw himself into the Thames,
he might perhaps fall beyond the reach of the waterman's hook. Alaric
himself, however, had no such fears. He could not bring himself to
conceive that he could fail in being fit for a clerkship in a public office,
and the result of his examination proved at any rate that he had been
right to try.
The close of his first year's life in London found him living in lodgings
with Henry Norman. At that time Norman's income was nearly three
times as good as his own. To say that Tudor selected his companion
because of his income would be to ascribe unjustly to him vile motives
and a mean instinct. He had not done so. The two young men had been
thrown, together by circumstances. They worked at the same desk,
liked each other's society, and each being alone in the world, thereby
not unnaturally came together. But it may probably be said that had
Norman been as poor as Tudor, Tudor might probably have shrunk
from rowing in the same boat with him.
As it was they lived together and were fast allies; not the less so that
they did not agree as to many of their avocations. Tudor, at his friend's
solicitation, had occasionally attempted to pull an oar from Searle's slip
to Battersea bridge. But his failure in this line was so complete, and he
had to encounter so much of Norman's raillery, which was endurable,
and of his instruction, which was unendurable, that he very soon gave
up the pursuit. He was not more successful with a racket; and keeping a
horse was of course out of the question.
They had a bond of union in certain common friends whom they much
loved, and with whom they much associated. At least these friends
soon became common to them. The acquaintance originally belonged
to Norman, and he had first cemented his friendship with Tudor by
introducing him at the house of Mrs. Woodward. Since he had done so,
the one young man was there nearly as much as the other.
Who and what the Woodwards were shall be told in a subsequent
chapter. As they have to play as important a part in the tale about to be
told as our two friends of the Weights and Measures, it would not be

becoming to introduce them at the end of this.
As regards Alaric Tudor it need only be further said, by way of preface,
of him as of Harry Norman, that the faults of his character must be
made to declare themselves in the course of our narrative.
CHAPTER II
THE INTERNAL NAVIGATION
The London world, visitors as well as residents, are well acquainted
also with Somerset House; and it is moreover tolerably well known that
Somerset House is a nest of public offices, which are held to be of less
fashionable repute than those situated in the neighbourhood of
Downing Street, but are not so decidedly plebeian as the Custom House,
Excise, and Post Office.
But there is one branch of the Civil Service located in Somerset House,
which has little else to redeem it from the lowest depths of official
vulgarity than the ambiguous respectability of its material position.
This is the office of the Commissioners of Internal Navigation. The
duties to be performed have reference to the preservation of canal
banks, the tolls to be levied at locks, and disputes with the Admiralty as
to points connected with tidal rivers. The rooms are dull and dark, and
saturated with the fog which rises from the river, and their only
ornament is here and there some dusty model of an improved barge.
Bargees not unfrequently scuffle with hobnailed shoes through the
passages, and go in and out, leaving behind them a smell of tobacco, to
which the denizens of the place are not unaccustomed.
Indeed, the whole office is apparently infected with a leaven of
bargedom. Not a few of the men are employed from time to time in the
somewhat lethargic work of inspecting