Born on the 18th of September 1852, I was christened William Marcus Hart in the Baptist church on Newbury Street. My parents, Anne and Marcus, were a kindly couple who had been married nigh on fifteen years and had all but given up the hope of ever conceiving a child. In view of the fact that my mother was nearing her fortieth year and therefore almost past child bearing age, my birth was seen as something of a miracle by my delighted parents and as a result, they became extremely protective. I consequently grew to be a quiet, lonely child, sheltered from the world and forever clinging to my doting mother’s apron strings. My father’s untimely death when I was twelve years old, however, forever altered my life.
My mother had always had a fairly weak constitution, and my birth had not helped her health one iota. Coupled with the grief of my father’s premature demise, she was left bedridden for much of my adolescence, and I was left in the care of Susan, our matronly housekeeper. My father had never been a rich man, by the days standards, but we were a reasonably well off middle class family, and so when I was old enough, I went away to school. Making friends had never been easy for me, and so I put all of my energy into my studies. It was hardly surprising, therefore, that I left school with great expectations for a better future. Cambridge accepted me readily, and I spent a year and a half there before my mother’s heath took a turn for the worse and I was forced to give up my education and return home to look after her. My schooling had been a considerable drain on our family’s finances, and of course, with no money coming in, we could no longer afford the nurse that had looked after my mother during my time away. I felt overwhelmed with guilt, and as a result, I forced myself to give up my own ambitions to be a medical professional and instead went to work in a solicitor’s office, earning a pittance, but it was enough for Susan and Miss Green, the nurse, to stay with us. By this time, however, we had fallen behind on several bills, and we were forced to downsize to a small townhouse near Cheapside. The place itself was adequate enough, but I could tell that such a downward slide on the ladder of social hierarchy all but broke my mother’s heart. I personally cared little about other people’s opinions. The fact that we had fallen on hard times, however, isolated us from many of the people that my mother had counted as friends, and she fell into a sort of depression as a result. Back then of course, there was no such thing as depression, and the doctors diagnosed her with a range of afflictions, from the bizarre to the ridiculous. The truth was, no one quite knew what was wrong with her and short of sending her to some sort of asylum, the doctors were all drawing blanks. During those weeks I felt more helpless than I ever had, and in an attempt to feel useful, I spent a good part of each evening talking to her about everything and anything that was troubling her. I suppose I was giving her therapy of sorts, not that I knew it at the time. Within a month she was showing signs of improvement, much to my own bewilderment. Mother seemed healthier than she’d been in a long while, and I suppose now that she must have been desperately lonely and in need of someone to talk to. After all, we had lost our home and been abandoned by our friends in a very short space of time. I suspect that she was likely still grieving for my father too, in some small way. However, back then, I was simply relieved that her illness appeared to be abating.
Mother was still weak, but for the first time in years was well enough to take short walks, and every evening before supper we would stroll along the river until she got too tired or the hour became too late. It pleased me no end to see my mother returning to the person I had known as a child. My menial job at the solicitor’s office seemed at the time to be endless; I worked all hours for far less than today’s minimum wage. Nevertheless, it gave me a new ambition; I was going to train to be a solicitor. It wasn’t a farfetched ambition, either. I’d had a good education; I spoke well and was fluent in several languages, all necessary skills. Mother encouraged me, as she always had, and within a few years I had qualified. Of course, at the time, it hadn’t occurred to me what such a job would do to me. I was naïve and painfully shy, and the world that I had unknowingly stumbled into was cutthroat and lethal. After another year or so struggling to make something of myself, I met a man named Jacob Ramsly, a business acquaintance of Billy Potter, my employer. He was a slimy fellow- money hungry, dispassionate- the sort of person that I would have never previously aligned myself with in a million years. Mr. Ramsly, however, took me under his wing and I became his apprentice of sorts. I disliked him; he was unsavoury, but as I had quickly discovered, he had exactly the right attributes to make a success out of the law. He found a shop for let near the butchers on Pesency Lane, and Ramsly persuaded me to go into business with him and an associate of his, who, whilst had no intimate experience with the law, knew money, and footed the bill. Gregory Wolfsan was a strange man, clearly old money, and fairly contemptible. His only ambition seemed to be to gain as much influence and power as possible, and I knew for a fact that I disliked him. At least Ramsly, whilst questionable in the extreme, was straightforward. Wolfsan seemed to me to be about as dishonourable a man as could be. However, being rich, he was accepted into polite society with open arms. The hypocrisy awakened something in me, some deep rooted loathing for the privileged, which shaped my personality in later years.
By the time I was 26, I had been working with Wolfram and Hart for a good four years, and in that time had acquired more wealth than I knew what to do with. It was dirty money, of course, but by that point the only thing I truly cared about was making life for my mother more comfortable in her twilight years. However hard I tried to become like my business partners, however, I remained a sensitive soul. My mother recognised how the living I had chosen was slowly eating away at me, and insisted that I give up the law firm. I was relieved and bought many shares in the company before I left Ramsly and Wolfsan to their own devices. With the shares brought more wealth and I invested wisely. I may have been simpering and pathetic, but I was not stupid. Once again free to be a gentleman of leisure, I began to pay more attention to my first love; the arts. I had sought to go into Medicine as a younger man because it had been my father’s dearest wish, but above all, I loved poetry. Poetry that inspired the senses and warmed the soul. Poetry that made you fall in love.
We moved again that winter, this time to a more respectable part of town, where we found ourselves being reaccepted into society. Mother was overjoyed, but I saw the truth. The sycophancy was disgusting, and I hated them all the more. Of course, this ostracised me, but I was used to being treated as such; I had been an outcast for all of my life, and it bothered me little. Even as one third of one of the most successful law firms in London, I’d known I was only there because no one else would have been foolish enough to go into business with two crooks. I was on the periphery of life, certain that it would always be so, that I would always be watching the glittering people from the shadows. I hardly cared until I met Cecily Underwood.
With Mother’s illness being my prime concern in my earlier years, I had had little time to consider the prospect of marriage. Also, with no money to speak of, I’d had little to recommend me to the opposite sex, nor was I in any position to barter for a wife. In Cecily, however, I saw something. Something bright. Possibly it was because she seemed so unlike the phonies with whom she associated with daily. Being American, she too was somewhat on the outer edge, but was accepted because she was beautiful and of good stock. I loved her. Dearly. She was the person I thought about constantly, dreamed of constantly. For the first time, I didn’t resent the wealth I had acquired, not if it would help me to win her. I was aware that even being relatively rich, I was still far from being an ideal match for someone of her status, but I wanted her to be mine so badly that I cared little of expectations. I felt certain that she would feel the same. I poured my heart out to her daily in the form of poetry. It was all nonsense, I see that now, but it was written with such emotion that at the time it seemed more poignant than anything dreamt up by the great masters. I never told a soul about my heart’s deepest longings, but simply allowed myself to pine away for her. They all knew, of course. I’d become something of a joke in polite society, but I ignored it all; the way they jeered, and most importantly, the way my beloved girl would wince every time I turned my eyes to her.
After months of waiting for the right moment to declare myself, I seized an opportunity at a soiree held for the youngest Underwood’s coming out party; Miss Emiline. Cecily had located me, as always, hiding in some dark corner, scribbling away whilst people whispered, laughed, muttered “William the Bloody!” under their breath, assuming as always that I couldn’t hear them, but likely they wouldn’t have cared a jot to realise that I could. I was surprised to see her, overwhelmed by her presence. She confronted me hesitantly about my affections for her, and I stumbled over my words, bumbling and stupid. She was unsurprised, but clearly displeased. I clutched to the last remnants of hope, asking her to see me for who I could be, not what the world saw me as. It seemed she could not. She was bitter. Hateful. I was beneath her. Somewhere deep down I had always known it. She wasn’t really someone that I could have truly loved. She was too proper to love me the way I would have wanted, anyway. But still, she broke my heart.
My life in that moment seemed to be one heartbreak after another. My father’s death, my mother’s illness, my failure to provide for her when she needed me the most, my wealth that had brought me to this place and these people, the wealth that was dirty and most likely obtained illegally. I’d turned a blind eye to the sort of clients the firm had had. I had left that side up to Ramsly, thankful that I would never have to face people. I was a glorified accountant. Ramsly was the front man. I’d never cared. But in that moment I cared so much. I shredded my poetry as I rushed from that place, swearing to myself that I would never allow myself to fall in such away again. I knew then that I was meant to be alone. I had never felt so worthless and unwanted. Cecily’s rejection was the final straw. She, who had been the person I had built my hopes on, the person whom I had been living for, was no better than anyone else in that wretched town. I wanted them all to suffer as I had suffered. Wanted them to feel what it was like to be insignificant and unwanted. I wanted it so badly.
squawks
05/18/17 04:16 am
pj! I remember wishing one of your stories would be finished seriously about a decade ago. Amazing. I just tried an old password I used to use and amazingly got in too. Memories!
pj
03/20/17 01:20 am
10 yrs later, i finally rem my username and password. Pari, you rock. Hope you are well.
Rabbit_moon1
12/23/16 01:12 pm
I donate every month. Please donate to keep this site up!
AudryDaluz1
10/06/16 08:34 am
Great post.
Chrissel
08/31/16 03:45 pm
And anyone else who loves this site, it's worth mentioning there's a nifty little "Donate" option just below the shout box here! ;)
Chrissel
08/31/16 03:43 pm
Just wanted to take a moment to thank Pari and all the mods for maintaining such a great site!
05/18/17 04:16 am
pj! I remember wishing one of your stories would be finished seriously about a decade ago. Amazing. I just tried an old password I used to use and amazingly got in too. Memories!
pj
03/20/17 01:20 am
10 yrs later, i finally rem my username and password. Pari, you rock. Hope you are well.
Rabbit_moon1
12/23/16 01:12 pm
I donate every month. Please donate to keep this site up!
AudryDaluz1
10/06/16 08:34 am
Great post.
Chrissel
08/31/16 03:45 pm
And anyone else who loves this site, it's worth mentioning there's a nifty little "Donate" option just below the shout box here! ;)
Chrissel
08/31/16 03:43 pm
Just wanted to take a moment to thank Pari and all the mods for maintaining such a great site!