Surrounded by the comforts of middle-class respectability, and profoundly oppressed, even in his youth, by the Puritan ideals of the household, he sometimes experienced a sense of suffocation.

He wanted free air and he wanted free life; he wanted the lights, the lights and the music.

He abandoned the bourgeoise irrevocably.

He went forth in a May twilight, carrying the evening beefsteak with him, and joined the underworld.
His extraordinary size, his daring and his utter lack of sympathy soon made him the leader--and, at the same time, the terror--of all the loose-lived cats in a wide neighbourhood.

He contracted no friendships and had no confidants.