Every morning, with an air ever new, Herbert went into the City to look about him. I often paid him a visit in the dark back-room in which he consorted with an ink-jar, a hat-peg, a coal-box, a string-box, an almanack, a desk and stool, and a ruler; and I do not remember that I ever saw him do anything else but look about him. If we all did what we undertake to do, as faithfully as Herbert did, we might live in a Republic of the Virtues. He had nothing else to do, poor fellow, except at a certain hour of every afternoon to `go to Lloyd's' - in observance of a ceremony of seeing his principal, I think. He never did anything else in connexion with Lloyd's that I could find out, except come back again. When he felt his case unusually serious, and that he positively must find an opening, he would go on 'Change at a busy time, and walk in and out, in a kind of gloomy country dance figure, among the assembled magnates. `For,' says Herbert to me, coming home to dinner on one of those special occasions, `I find the truth to be, Handel, that an opening won't come to one, but one must go to it - so I have been.'
If we had been less attached to one another, I think we must have hated one another regularly every morning. I detested the chambers beyond expression at that period of repentance, and could not endure the sight of the Avenger's livery: which had a more expensive and a less remunerative appearance then, than at any other time in the four-and-twenty hours. As we got more and more into debt breakfast became a hollower and hollower form, and, being on one occasion at breakfast-time threatened (by letter) with legal proceedings, `not unwholly unconnected,' as my local paper might put it, `with jewellery,'
I went so far as to seize the Avenger by his blue collar and shake him off his feet - so that he was actually in the air, like a booted Cupid - for presuming to suppose that we wanted a roll.
At certain times - meaning at uncertain times, for they depended on our humour - I would say to Herbert, as if it were a remarkable discovery:
`My dear Herbert, we are getting on badly.'
`My dear Handel,' Herbert would say to me, in all sincerity, if you will believe me, those very words were on my lips, by a strange coincidence.'
`Then, Herbert,'I would respond, `let us look into out affairs.'
We always derived profound satisfaction from ****** an appointment for this purpose. I always thought this was business, this was the way to confront the thing, this was the way to take the foe by the throat. And I know Herbert thought so too.
We ordered something rather special for dinner, with a bottle of something similarly out of the common way, in order that our minds might be fortified for the occasion, and we might come well up to the mark. Dinner over, we produced a bundle of pens, a copious supply of ink, and a goodly show of writing and blotting paper. For, there was something very comfortable in having plenty of stationery.
I would then take a sheet of paper, and write across the top of it, in a neat hand, the heading, `Memorandum of Pip's debts;' with Barnard's Inn and the date very carefully added. Herbert would also take a sheet of paper, and write across it with similar formalities, `Memorandum of Herbert's debts.'
