Possible Clues:

• Far from affluent
• Poor journalist, being captured by French soldier!
• Like many scholarship recipients
• Craving attention, journalist is trapped by mounting desire
• Like a soup kitchen habitue
• Broke
• Born in 1 dn, extremely dowdy and deprived
• Eligible for a scholarship, maybe
• Destitute journalist taken in by French marshal
• Poor journalist's rising desire to be employed outside