Francis Adams was a British poet, novelist, journalist, and radical writer. He spent several years in Australia, where he contributed to literary and political journalism, before returning to England. His fiction includes Leicester: An Autobiography and the posthumously published A Child of the Age.
Francis Adams
A Child of the Age
1894. Garland, 1977.
Generally, in the late afternoon I went out for a walk into the Regent's Park, feeling as if I were away from the streets and the life-worn people there. Many happy hours were spent by me wandering whistling over the middle grass plateau (it seemed to me like a plateau), thinking of my work and, sometimes, of the dear woman to whom some day I should tell all of this...I was very fond of wandering by night: especially to the top of Primrose Hill, to look out over the great city, and the rings of light closer to, as in a vestibule-court of an almost boundless palace-building.
Returning home from his walk Bertie is in time to rescue a fellow lodger, Rosy, from being evicted for non-payment of rent, thereby winning her devotion as well as her gratitude. Hard up himself - a poet who cannot find a publisher - he finally takes a job as secretary to a gentleman travelling abroad. Now he has to break the news to Rosy, and suggests they go for a walk.
We were half-way up Primrose Hill: when all at once I remembered a certain bench not far from the top, by which I had on a certain night stood and looked out over the darkness from which came the cool breeze fanning my feverish cheek...I led her a little round then up to it. And we sat down upon it together and talked softly.
Leicester: An Autobiography
George Redway, 1885. 2 vols.
Despite its title this is a novel, an earlier version of A Child of the Age: longer and with a different ending. There are two passages which were deleted from the later work:
[I] passed out of a somewhat dirty road, through the gates, and so over the two bridges into the Park itself. I sauntered along the side of the lake, looking at the swans and ducks. It was a glorious morning. The sun breathed a gentle heat upon me, and warmed me gratefully. The dew was still on the grass: a few people hurried across by pathways; every now and then a duck whirred through the air. At last I reached another bridge, went onto it, and stood and watched a flight of birds bathing themselves wantonly in the shallows of a small bay on the far shore...I ate my dates and loaf on a seat behind, or rather beside, a tree on an elevation that runs up there and along parallel to the curve of the lake.
It was a few days after this that Rosy and I went our second evening walk together...We went up to the top of Primrose Hill again, and I snuffed in the breeze and was somewhat revived; but (it had been raining heavily earlier in the day) that made me appreciate how stickily muddy it was going down, and I was forthwith driven into a state of utter saplessness and disgust.