One promise
I extorted--that I was never again to be committed in
ignorance. Even for that, when I saw how its extortion
puzzled and depressed the Irrepressible, my soul
repented me, and in all else I suffered myself to be
led uncomplaining at his chariot-wheels. The
Irrepressible, did I say? The Irresistible were nigher
truth.
But the time to have seen me was when I sat down to
Harry Miller's lecture. He was a facetious dog, this
Harry Miller. He had a gallant way of skirting the
indecent, which in my case produced physical nausea,
and he could be sentimental and even melodramatic about
grisettes and starving genius. I found he had enjoyed
the benefit of my correspondence with Pinkerton;
adventures of my own were here and there horridly
misrepresented, sentiments of my own echoed and
exaggerated till I blushed to recognise them. I will
do Harry Miller justice: he must have had a kind of
talent, almost of genius; all attempts to lower his
tone proving fruitless, and the Harry-Millerism
ineradicable. Nay, the monster had a certain key of
style, or want of style, so that certain milder
passages, which I sought to introduce, discorded
horribly and impoverished, if that were possible, the
general effect.
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