He was able to pick up a shilling or two more weekly
by going on errands for the clerks during his slack
time in the day, so that altogether on the average
he made up about eighteen shillings. Wandering
about the Clare Market region on Sunday he found us
out, came in, and remained constant. Naturally,
as we had so few adherents, we gradually knew these
few very intimately, and Taylor would often spend
a holiday or part of the Sunday with us. He was
not eminent for anything in particular, and an educated
man, selecting as his friends those only who stand
for something, would not have taken the slightest
notice of him. He had read nothing particular,
and thought nothing particular—he was indeed
one of the masses—but in this respect different,
that he had not the tendency to association, aggregation,
or clanship which belong to the masses generally.
He was different, of course, in all his ways from
his neighbours born and bred to Clare Market and its
alleys. Although commonplace, he had demands
made upon him for an endurance by no means commonplace,
and he had sorrows which were as exquisite as those
of his betters. He did not much resent his poverty.
To that I think he would have submitted, and in fact
he did submit to it cheerfully. What rankled
in him was the brutal disregard of him at the office.
He was a servant of servants. The messengers,
who themselves were exposed to all the petty tyrannies
of the clerks, and dared not reply, were Taylor’s
masters, and sought a compensation for their own serfdom
by making his ten times worse. The head messenger,
who had been a butler, swore at him, and if Taylor
had “answered” he would have been reported.
He had never been a person of much importance, but
at least he had been independent, and it was a new
experience for him to feel that he was a thing fit
for nothing but to be cuffed and cursed. Upon
this point he used to get eloquent—as eloquent
as he could be, for he had small power of expression,
and he would describe to me the despair which came
over him down in those dark vaults at the prospect
of life continuing after this fashion, and with not
the minutest gleam of light even at the very end.
Nobody ever cared to know the most ordinary facts about
him. Nobody inquired whether he was married
or single; nobody troubled himself when he was ill.
If he was away, his pay was stopped; and when he
returned to work nobody asked if he was better.
Who can wonder that at first, when he was an utter
stranger in a strange land, he was overcome by the
situation, and that the world was to him a dungeon
worse than that of Chillon? Who can wonder that
he was becoming reckless? A little more of such
a life would have transformed him into a brute.
He had not the ability to become revolutionary, or
it would have made him a conspirator. Suffering
of any kind is hard to bear, but the suffering which
especially damages character is that which is caused
by the neglect or oppression of man. At any rate