To the artist nature the present is everything; just for to-day he resolved that he would live as he had always lived; so he travelled first class to London and bought all the books and papers that could distract him on the way: "Give me the luxuries," he used to say, "and anyone can have the necessaries." In the background of his mind there were serious misgivings.

Long afterwards he told me that his father's death and the smallness of his patrimony had been a heavy blow to him.

He encouraged himself, however, at the moment by dwelling on his brother's comparative success and waved aside fears and doubts as unworthy.
It is to his credit that at first he tried to cut down expenses and live laborious days.

He took a couple of furnished rooms in Salisbury Street off the Strand, a very Grub Street for a man of fashion, and began to work at journalism while getting together a book of poems for publication.

His journalism at first was anything but successful.