He considered with some irony the philosophy which
he had developed for himself, for it had not been
of much use to him in the conjuncture he had passed
through; and he wondered whether thought really helped
a man in any of the critical affairs of life:
it seemed to him rather that he was swayed by some
power alien to and yet within himself, which urged
him like that great wind of Hell which drove Paolo
and Francesca ceaselessly on. He thought of what
he was going to do and, when the time came to act,
he was powerless in the grasp of instincts, emotions,
he knew not what. He acted as though he were
a machine driven by the two forces of his environment
and his personality; his reason was someone looking
on, observing the facts but powerless to interfere:
it was like those gods of Epicurus, who saw the doings
of men from their empyrean heights and had no might
to alter one smallest particle of what occurred.
LXXIX
Philip went up to London a couple of days before the
session began in order to find himself rooms.
He hunted about the streets that led out of the Westminster
Bridge Road, but their dinginess was distasteful to
him; and at last he found one in Kennington which
had a quiet and old-world air. It reminded one
a little of the London which Thackeray knew on that
side of the river, and in the Kennington Road, through
which the great barouche of the Newcomes must have
passed as it drove the family to the West of London,
the plane-trees were bursting into leaf. The houses
in the street which Philip fixed upon were two-storied,
and in most of the windows was a notice to state that
lodgings were to let. He knocked at one which
announced that the lodgings were unfurnished, and was
shown by an austere, silent woman four very small
rooms, in one of which there was a kitchen range and
a sink. The rent was nine shillings a week.
Philip did not want so many rooms, but the rent was
low and he wished to settle down at once. He
asked the landlady if she could keep the place clean
for him and cook his breakfast, but she replied that
she had enough work to do without that; and he was
pleased rather than otherwise because she intimated
that she wished to have nothing more to do with him
than to receive his rent. She told him that,
if he inquired at the grocer’s round the corner,
which was also a post office, he might hear of a woman
who would `do’ for him.
Philip had a little furniture which he had gathered
as he went along, an arm-chair that he had bought
in Paris, and a table, a few drawings, and the small
Persian rug which Cronshaw had given him. His
uncle had offered a fold-up bed for which, now that
he no longer let his house in August, he had no further
use; and by spending another ten pounds Philip bought
himself whatever else was essential. He spent
ten shillings on putting a corn-coloured paper in
the room he was making his parlour; and he hung on
the walls a sketch which Lawson had given him of the
