pretty nearly
all the English lyric poets; Shelley's atheism had led me to read Kant,
Spinoza, Godwin, Darwin and Mill; and these, again, in their turn,
introduced me to many writers and various literature. I do not think that
at this time I cared much for novel reading. 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: "Middle-march," "Adam Bede," "The Rise and Fall of
Rationalism," "The History of Civilisation," were momentous events in my
life. But I loved life better than books, 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 as much on
scent and toilette knick-knacks 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 for fear; I was naturally
endowed with a very clear sense indeed 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.

CHAPTER