I Rambled About The Fields Where I Fancied Goldsmith Had
Rambled.
I explored merry Islington; ate my solitary dinner at the
Black Bull, which according to tradition was a country seat of Sir
Walter Raleigh, and would sit and sip my wine and muse on old times in
a quaint old room, where many a council had been held.
All this did very well for a few days: I was stimulated by novelty;
inspired by the associations awakened in my mind by these curious
haunts, and began to think I felt the spirit of composition stirring
within me; but Sunday came, and with it the whole city world, swarming
about Canonbury Castle. 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. I tried to make out a little longer by taking the key in my
pocket, but it would not do. I overheard mine hostess one day telling
some of her customers on the stairs that the room was occupied by an
author, who was always in a tantrum if interrupted; and I immediately
perceived, by a slight noise at the door, that they were peeping at me
through the key-hole. By the head of Apollo, but this was quite too
much! with all my eagerness for fame, and my ambition of the stare of
the million, I had no idea of being exhibited by retail, at sixpence a
head, and that through a key-hole. So I bade adieu to Canonbury Castle,
merry Islington, and the haunts of poor Goldsmith, without having
advanced a single line in my labors.
My next quarters were at a small white-washed cottage, which stands not
far from Hempstead, just on the brow of a hill, looking over Chalk
farm, and Camden town, remarkable for the rival houses of Mother Red
Cap and Mother Black Cap; and so across Cruckskull common to the
distant city.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 68 of 223
Words from 34902 to 35447
of 115667
