, but
they are nothing to others that he wrote a little later on.
    In his eagerness to regenerate the Church of England (and, through this, the
universe) by the means which Pryer had suggested to him, it occurred to him to
try to familiarise himself with the habits and thoughts of the poor by going and
living among them. I think he got this notion from Kingsley's Alton Locke,
which, high churchman though he for the nonce was, he had devoured as he had
devoured Stanley's Life of Arnold, Dickens's novels, and whatever other literary
garbage of the day was most likely to do him harm; at any rate he actually put
his scheme into practice, and took lodgings in a house of which the landlady was
the widow of a cabman, in Ashpit Place - a small street in the neighbourhood of
Drury Lane Theatre.
    This lady occupied the whole ground floor. In the front kitchen there was a
tinker. The back kitchen was let to a bellows-mender. On the first floor came
Ernest, with his two rooms which he furnished comfortably - for one must draw
the line somewhere. The two upper floors were parcelled out among four different
sets of lodgers: there was a tailor named Holt, a drunken fellow who used to
beat his wife at night till her screams woke up the house; above him there was
another tailor with a wife but no children; these people were Wesleyans, given
to drink, but not noisy. The two back rooms were held by single ladies, who it
seemed to Ernest must be respectably connected, for well-dressed gentlemanly
looking young men used to go up and down stairs past Ernest's rooms to call at
any rate on Miss Snow. Ernest had heard her door slam after they had passed. He
thought too that some of them went up to Miss Maitland's; Mrs. Jupp, the
landlady, told Ernest that these were brothers and cousins of Miss Snow's - and
that she was herself looking out for a situation as a governess, but at present
had an engagement as an actress at the Drury Lane Theatre.
    Ernest asked whether Miss Maitland in the top back was also looking out for
a situation, and was told she was wanting engagement as a milliner. He believed
whatever Mrs. Jupp told him.
 

                                   Chapter 54

This move on Ernest's part was variously commented upon by his friends, the
general opinion being that it was just like Pontifex, who was sure to do
something unusual wherever he went, but that on the whole the idea was
commendable. Christina could
