Reardon had all but made up his mind to try this venture when he suddenly became a widower; after that he never summoned energy to embark on new enterprises.
The boy was educated at an excellent local school; at eighteen he had a far better acquaintance with the ancient classics than most lads who have been expressly prepared for a university, and, thanks to an anglicised Swiss who acted as an assistant in Mr Reardon's business, he not only read French, but could talk it with a certain haphazard fluency.

These attainments, however, were not of much practical use; the best that could be done for Edwin was to place him in the office of an estate agent.

His health was indifferent, and it seemed likely that open-air exercise, of which he would have a good deal under the particular circumstances of the case, might counteract the effects of study too closely pursued.
At his father's death he came into possession (practically it was put at his disposal at once, though he was little more than nineteen) of about two hundred pounds--a life-insurance for five hundred had been sacrificed to exigencies not very long before.

He had no difficulty in deciding how to use this money.

His mother's desire to live in London had in him the force of an inherited motive; as soon as possible he released himself from his uncongenial occupations, converted into money all the possessions of which he had not immediate need, and betook himself to the metropolis.
To become a literary man, of course.
His capital lasted him nearly four years, for, notwithstanding his age, he lived with painful economy.