preface to base miseries.

He was the son of a man who had followed many different pursuits,
and in none had done much more than earn a livelihood. At the age
of forty--when Edwin, his only child, was ten years old--Mr
Reardon established himself in the town of Hereford as a
photographer, and there he abode until his death, nine years
after, occasionally risking some speculation not inconsistent
with the photographic business, but always with the result of
losing the little capital he ventured. Mrs Reardon died when
Edwin had reached his fifteenth year. In breeding and education
she was superior to her husband, to whom, moreover, she had
brought something between four and five hundred pounds; her
temper was passionate in both senses of the word, and the
marriage could hardly be called a happy one, though it was never
disturbed by serious discord. The photographer was a man of whims
and idealisms; his wife had a strong vein of worldly ambition.
They made few friends, and it was Mrs Reardon's frequently
expressed desire to go and live in London, where fortune, she
thought, might be kinder to them. 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