Household Brigade plays cricket, and the breezes from the river come to
it without much interruption. There was also more quiet. No. 23 is the
last house in the street, and, even when I sat with my window open, the
noise of traffic from the King's Road was faint and rather pleasant. It
was an excellent spot for a man who meant to work. Except for a certain
difficulty in getting my landlady and her daughters out of the room
when they came to clear away my meals and talk about the better days
they had seen, and a few imbroglios with the eight cats which infested
the house, it was the best spot, I think, that I could have chosen.

Living a life ruled by the strictest economy, I gradually forged ahead.
Verse, light and serious, continued my long suit. I generally managed
to place two of each brand a week; and that meant two guineas,
sometimes more. One particularly pleasing thing about this
verse-writing was that there was no delay, as there was with my prose.
I would write a set of verses for a daily paper after tea, walk to
Fleet Street with them at half-past six, thus getting a little
exercise; leave them at the office; and I would see them in print in
the next morning's issue. Payment was equally prompt. The rule was,
Send in your bill before five on Wednesday, and call for payment on
Friday at seven. Thus I had always enough money to keep me going during
the week.

In addition to verses, I kept turning out a great quantity of prose,
fiction, and otherwise, but without much success. The visits of the
postmen were the big events of the day at that time. Before I had been
in Walpole Street a week I could tell by ear the difference between a
rejected manuscript and an ordinary letter. There is a certain solid
_plop_ about the fall of the former which not even a long envelope
full of proofs can imitate successfully.