I could not open my window but I was stunned
with shouts and noises from the cricket ground. The late quiet road
beneath my window was alive with the tread of feet and clack of
tongues; and to complete my misery, I found that my quiet retreat was
absolutely a "show house!" the tower and its contents being shown to
strangers at sixpence a head.
There was a perpetual tramping up-stairs of citizens and their
families, to look about the country from the top of the tower, and to
take a peep at the city through the telescope, to try if they could
discern their own chimneys. And then, in the midst of a vein of
thought, or a moment of inspiration, I was interrupted, and all my
ideas put to flight, by my intolerable landlady's tapping at the door,
and asking me, if I would "jist please to let a lady and gentleman come
in to take a look at Mr. Goldsmith's room."
If you know anything what an author's study is, and what an author is
himself, you must know that there was no standing this. I put a
positive interdict on my room's being exhibited; but then it was shown
when I was absent, and my papers put in confusion; and on returning
home one day, I absolutely found a cursed tradesman and his daughters
gaping over my manuscripts; and my landlady in a panic at my
appearance.
