nscious. In regard to matters upon which his instinct had
not suggested a course of action, George was always ready enough to be
taught; indeed his respect for an expert was truly deferential. But when
his instinct had begun to operate he would consult nobody and consider
nobody, being deeply sure that infallible wisdom had been granted to
him. (Nor did experience seem to teach him.) Thus, in the affair of a
London lodging, though he was still two years from his majority and had
no resources save the purse of his stepfather, Edwin Clayhanger, he had
decided to leave the Orgreaves without asking or even informing his
parents. In his next letter home he would no doubt inform them,
casually, of what he meant to do or actually had done, and if objections
followed he would honestly resent them.

A characteristic example of his independence had happened when at the
unripe age of seventeen he left the Five Towns for London. Upon his
mother's marriage to Edwin Clayhanger his own name had been informally
changed for him to Clayhanger. But a few days before the day of
departure he had announced that, as Clayhanger was not his own name and
that he preferred his own name, he should henceforth be known as
'Cannon,' his father's name. He did not invite discussion. Mr.
Clayhanger had thereupon said to him privately and as one man of the
world to another: "But you aren't really entitled to the name Cannon,
sonny." "Why?" "Because your father was what's commonly known as a
bigamist, and his marriage with your mother was not legal. I thought I'd
take this opportunity of telling you. You needn't say anything to your
mother--unless of course you feel you must." To which George had
replied: "No, I won't. But if Cannon was my father's name I think I'll
have it all the same." And he did have it. The bigamy of his father did
not apparently affect him. Upon further inquiry he learnt that his
father might be alive or might be dead, but that if alive he was in
America.

The few words from Mr. Enwright about Chelsea had sufficed to turn
Chelsea into Elysium, Paradise, almost into Paris. No other quarter of
London was inhabitable by a rising architect. As soon as Haim had gone
George had begun to look up Chelsea in the office library, and as Mr.
Enwright happened to be an active member of the Society for the Survey
of the Memorials of Greater London, the library served him well. In an
hour and a half he had absorbed something of the historical top