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The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft
·
George Gissing
52
XVIII.
Is
it
I,
Henry
Ryecroft,
who,
after
a
night
of
untroubled
rest,
rise
unhurriedly,
dress
with
the
deliberation
of
an
oldish
man,
and
go
downstairs
happy
in
the
thought
that
I
can
sit
reading,
quietly
reading,
all
day
long?
Is
it
I,
Henry
Ryecroft,
the
harassed
toiler
of
so
many
a
long
year?
I
dare
not
think
of
those
I
have
left
behind
me,
there
in
the
ink-stained
world.
It
would
make
me
miserable,
and
to
what
purpose?
Yet,
having
once
looked
that
way,
think
of
them
I
must.
Oh,
you
heavy-laden,
who
at
this
hour
sit
down
to
the
cursed
travail
of
the
pen;
writing,
not
because
there
is
something
in
your
mind,
in
your
heart,
which
must
needs
be
uttered,
but
because
the
pen
is
the
only
tool
you
can
handle,
your
only
means
of
earning
bread!
Year
after
year
the
number
of
you
is
multiplied;
you
crowd
the
doors
of
publishers
and
editors,
hustling,
grappling,
exchanging
maledictions.
Oh,
sorry
spectacle,
grotesque
and
heart-breaking!
Innumerable
are
the
men
and
women
now
writing
for
bread,
who
have
not
the
least
chance
of
finding
in
such
work
a
permanent
livelihood.
They
took
to
writing
because
they
knew
not
what
else
to
do,
or
because
the
literary
calling
tempted
them
by
its
independence
and
its
dazzling
prizes.
They
will
hang
on
to
the
squalid
profession,
their
earnings
eked
out
by
begging
and
borrowing,
until
it
is
too
late
for
them
to
do
anything
else--and
then?
With
a
lifetime
of
dread
experience
behind
me,
I
say
that
he
who
encourages
any
young
man
or
woman
to
look
for
his
living
to
"literature,"
commits
no
less
than
a
crime.
If
my
voice
had
any
authority,
I
would
cry
this
truth
aloud
wherever
men
could
hear.
Hateful
as
is
the
struggle
for
life
in
every
form,
this
rough-and-tumble
of
the
literary
arena
seems
to
me
sordid
and
degrading
beyond
all
others.
Oh,
your
prices
per
thousand
words!
Oh,
your
paragraphings
and
your
interviewings!
And
oh,
the
black
despair
that
awaits
those
down-trodden
in
the
fray.
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