From London Far Read Free

the way of trade. Over sun-drenched houris in wispy bathing suits, entranced couples proposing tennis, firm but kindly-faced business men, dignified but mildly humorous clergy; over the larger-than-life pasteboard of all these devotees of nicotine, the London grime had settled and the London spiders had spun. But still the vicar clutched his glowing pipe, his other hand lovingly toying with the tobacco jar with the College arms. For ever warm and still to be enjoyed , thought Meredith, momentarily abandoning Dr Johnson for Keats. Matinée idols thrust forwards disproportionately large cigarette cases in frozen gestures: Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss . Meredith smiled benignly at the sullen shopkeeper. What men or gods are these ? he wanted to say to him. What maidens loath? What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape? What pipes ?… Meredith faintly chuckled at this, startling the man who had now leant over the counter to fish him out his two ounces of tobacco. An unknown brand – but, of course, one was lucky to get it. Nevertheless, Meredith looked at it suspiciously. Would it satisfy the massively discriminative business man, the approachable but public-school and Oxfordy vicar? Or was it of the kind –
     
    That leaves a heart high sorrowful and cloy’d,
    A burning forehead, and a parching tongue?
     
    And Meredith was so startled at the appositeness of this final snatch from Keats’ Ode that he spoke aloud and at random. Moreover – and here was Fate’s final inconsequence, a riddle such as scarcely Dr Higbed himself might unravel – it was to Dr Johnson that he turned again as the obscure necessity for speech moved him. ‘London, a Poem,’ he articulated absently at the half-turned back of the tobacconist.
    And the man stiffened, swung round, glanced apprehensively round the empty shop. ‘Rotterdam’s gone,’ he said in a low voice. And, stooping swiftly, he tugged at a ring in the floor. A trapdoor opened and revealed a flight of wooden steps dropping into darkness.
    ‘Quick!’ said the man.
    Meredith paused a second – but it was to take hold of his tobacco. Then he stepped down. A light flicked on at his feet as he did so. And the trapdoor closed above his head.

 
     
II
    The practical and everyday advantages of the exacting science known as Textual Criticism are admittedly few. To ponder the minute inaccuracies of long-dead scribes and thus penetrate through a corrupted text to the pristine meaning of a yet longer-dead orator or grammarian is a way of life not likely to be appealing to the actively inclined. And yet, in what was to be decidedly an active affair, Textual Criticism gave Meredith a good send-off, for it enabled him, between one rung and the next, to discover why the words London, a Poem should receive the inconsequent answer Rotterdam’s gone . He had been understood to say London’s going ; and what he had exchanged with the sullen tobacconist was, in fact, a password and countersign. London’s going: Rotterdam’s gone . The second statement was as unchallengeable as it was melancholy. The first statement was an old guess and a bad one, since London, battered and beautiful, still very substantially existed all around him. An old guess; it was therefore to be inferred that the organization or racket or conspiracy – for certainly it was on something of the sort that he had stumbled – had been in existence for some time…
    Thus far did Meredith’s science take him. It could not at all tell him why he had himself done this extraordinary thing; why he should have thus unhesitatingly stepped into the melodrama so unexpectedly sprung upon him. But was it melodrama? Meredith, who was now more than halfway down the ladder, stopped, appalled. Had he come upon something merely sordid; perhaps upon a haunt of vice? Poised on the tobacconist’s ladder, he remembered a fable current in the Cambridge of his day. One went into a tobacconist’s shop (a tobacconist’s shop!), put