he not only read French, but
could talk it with a certain haphazard fluency. These attainments, however, were
not of much practical use; the best that could be done for Edwin was to place
him in the office of an estate agent. His health was indifferent, and it seemed
likely that open-air exercise, of which he would have a good deal under the
particular circumstances of the case, might counteract the effects of study too
closely pursued.
    At his father's death he came into possession (practically it was put at his
disposal at once, though he was little more than nineteen) of about two hundred
pounds - a life-insurance for five hundred had been sacrificed to exigencies not
very long before. He had no difficulty in deciding how to use this money. His
mother's desire to live in London had in him the force of an inherited motive;
as soon as possible he released himself from his uncongenial occupations,
converted into money all the possessions of which he had not immediate need, and
betook himself to the metropolis.
    To become a literary man, of course.
    His capital lasted him nearly four years, for, notwithstanding his age, he
lived with painful economy. The strangest life, of almost absolute loneliness.
From a certain point of Tottenham Court Road there is visible a certain garret
window in a certain street which runs parallel with that thoroughfare; for the
greater part of these four years the garret in question was Reardon's home. He
paid only three-and-sixpence a week for the privilege of living there; his food
cost him about a shilling a day; on clothing and other unavoidable expenses he
laid out some five pounds yearly. Then he bought books - volumes which cost
anything between twopence and two shillings; further than that he durst not go.
A strange time, I assure you.
    When he had completed his twenty-first year, he desired to procure a
reader's ticket for the British Museum. Now this was not such a simple matter as
you may suppose; it was necessary to obtain the signature of some respectable
householder, and Reardon was acquainted with no such person. His landlady was a
decent woman enough, and a payer of rates and taxes, but it would look odd, to
say the least of it, to present oneself in Great Russell Street armed with this
person's recommendation. There was nothing for it but to take a bold step, to
force himself upon the attention of a stranger - the thing from which his pride
had always shrunk. He wrote to a well-known