I couldn't give piano lessons,
I couldn't play in public--unless in a _gargotte_ like the hole we
have just left. Oh, I tried everything. I tried to get musical
criticism to do for the newspapers. Surely I was competent to do
musical criticism. But no--they wouldn't employ me. I had ill luck,
ill luck, ill luck--nothing but ill luck, defeat, disappointment. Was
it the will of Heaven? I wondered what unforgiveable sin I had
committed to be punished so. Do you know what it is like to work and
pray and wait, day after day, and watch day after day come and go and
bring you nothing? Oh, I tasted the whole heart-sickness of hope
deferred; Giant Despair was my constant bed-fellow.'
'But--with your connections--' I began.
'Oh, my connections!' he cried. 'There was the rub. London is the
cruellest town in Europe. For sheer cold blood and heartlessness give
Londoners the palm. I had connections enough for the first month or
so, and then people found out things that didn't concern them. They
found out some things that were true, and they imagined other things
that were false. They wouldn't have my wife; they told the most
infamous lies about her; and I wouldn't have _them_. Could I be civil
to people who insulted and slandered _her_? I had no connections in
London, except with the underworld.
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