It was a period of chill poverty that shamed to recognize itself. I was miserably, unutterably lonely. I developed a temper of acid. I looked on the world, and saw all things bitter and wicked. The passing of a rich carriage exasperated me to fury: I understood in those moments the spirit that impels men to throw bombs at millionaires and royalties. Among the furious wilds of Kingsland, Hackney, and Homerton I spent my rage. There seemed to be no escape, no outlet, no future. Sometimes I sat in that forlorn little room; sometimes I went to bed; sometimes I wandered and made queer acquaintance at street corners; sometimes I even scanned that tragic column of the _Daily Telegraph_--Situations Vacant. Money went dribbling away. At "Dirty Dick's" you can get a quartern of port for threepence, and gin is practically given away. Drink is a curse, I know, but there are innumerable times when it has saved a man from going under.... I wish temperance fiends would recognize this.
After a time, all effort and anxiety ceased. I became listless. I neither wondered nor anticipated. I wandered about the Christmas streets, amid radiant shops. The black slums and passages were little gorges of flame and warmth, and in Morning Lane, where the stalls roared with jollity, I could even snatch some of their spirit and feel, momentarily, one of them. The raucous mile of Cambridge Road I covered many times, strolling from lit window to lit window, from ragged smears of lights to ragged chunks of dark. The multitudes of "Useful Presents," "Pretty Gifts," "Remarkable Value," "Seasonable Offerings" did not tantalize me; they simply were part of another world. I saw things as one from Mars.
That was a ghastly Christmas. Through the whole afternoon I tramped--from Hackney to Homerton, thence to Clapton, to Stoke Newington, to Tottenham, and back. Emptiness was everywhere: no people, little traffic. Roofs and roads were hard with a light frost, and in the sudden twilight the gleaming windows of a hundred houses shone out jeeringly. Sounds of festivity disturbed the brooding quiet of the town. Each side street was a corridor of warm blinds. Harmoniums, pianos, concertinas, mouth organs, gramophones, tin trumpets, and voices uncertainly controlled, poured forth their strains, mingling and clashing. The whole thing seemed got up expressly for my disturbance. In one street I paused, and looked through an unshaded window into a little interior. Tea was in progress. Father and Mother were at table, Father feeding the baby with cake dipped in tea, Mother fussily busy with the teapot, while two bigger youngsters, with paper headdresses from the crackers, were sprawling on the rug, engaged in the exciting sport of toast-making. It made me sick. A little later the snow unexpectedly came down, and the moon came out and flung long passages of light over the white world, and forced me home to my room.