 | CHAPTER I. The monikins |  |
1. CHAPTER I.
The Author's pedigree—also, that of his Father.
The philosopher who broaches a new theory is
bound to furnish, at least, some elementary proofs
of the reasonableness of his positions, and the historian
who ventures to record marvels that have
hitherto been hid from human knowledge, owes it
to a decent regard to the opinions of others, to produce
some credible testimony in favor of his veracity.
I am peculiarly placed in regard to these
two great essentials, having little more than its
plausibility to offer in favor of my philosophy, and
no other witness than myself to establish the important
facts that are now about to be laid before the
reading world, for the first time. In this dilemma,
I fully feel the weight of responsibility under which
I stand; for there are truths of so little apparent
probability as to appear fictions, and fictions so like
the truth that the ordinary observer is very apt to
affirm that he was an eye-witness to their existence:
two facts that all our historians would do
well to bear in mind, since a knowledge of the circumstances
might spare them the mortification of
having testimony that cost a deal of trouble, discredited
in the one case, and save a vast deal of
painful and unnecessary labor, in the other. Thrown
upon myself, therefore, for what the French call les
pièces justîficatives of my theories, as well as of
to believe me, than by giving an unvarnished narrative
of my descent, birth, education and life, up
to the time I became a spectator of those wonderful
facts it is my happiness to record, and with
which it is now his to be made acquainted.
I shall begin with my descent, or pedigree, both
because it is in the natural order of events, and because,
in order to turn this portion of my narrative
to a proper account, in the way of giving credibility
to the rest of it, it may be of use in helping to
trace effects to their causes.
I have generally considered myself on a level
with the most ancient gentlemen of Europe, on the
score of descent, few families being more clearly
and directly traced into the mist of time, than that
of which I am a member. My descent from my
father is undeniably established by the parish register,
as well as by the will of that person himself,
and I believe no man could more directly prove the
truth of the whole career of his family, than it is
in my power to show that of my ancestor up to the
hour when he was found, in the second year of his
age, crying with cold and hunger, in the parish of
St. Giles, in the city of Westminster, and in the
United Kingdom of Great Britain. An orange-woman
had pity on his sufferings. She fed him
with a crust, warmed him with purl, and then humanely
led him to an individual with whom she
was in the habit of having frequent but angry interviews—the
parish officer. The case of my ancestor
was so obscure as to be clear. No one
could tell to whom he belonged, whence he came,
or what was likely to become of him; and as the
law did not admit of the starvation of children in
the street, under circumstances like these, the parish
officer, after making all proper efforts to induce
to believe that an infant thus abandoned
was intended as an especial boon from Providence
to each of them in particular, was obliged to commit
my father to the keeping of one of the regular
nurses of the parish. It was fortunate for the authenticity
of this pedigree, that such was the result
of the orange-woman's application; for, had my
worthy ancestor been subjected to the happy accidents
and generous caprices of voluntary charity,
it is more than probable I should be driven to throw
a veil over those important years of his life that
were notoriously passed in the work-house, but
which, in consequence of that occurrence, are now
easily authenticated by valid minutes and documentary
evidence. Thus it is that there exists no
void in the annals of our family, even that period
which is usually remembered through gossiping and
idle tales in the lives of most men, being matter of
legal record in that of my progenitor, and so continued
to be down to the day of his presumed majority,
since he was indented to a careful master
the moment the parish could with any legality, putting
decency quite out of the question, get rid of
him. I ought to have said, that the orange-woman,
taking a hint from the sign of a butcher opposite to
whose door my ancestor was found, had very cleverly
given him the name of Thomas Goldencalf.
This second important transition in the affairs of
my father, might be deemed a presage of his future
fortunes. He was bound apprentice to a trader in
fancy articles, or a shopkeeper who dealt in such
objects as are usually purchased by those who do
not well know what to do with their money. This
trade was of immense advantage to the future prosperity
of the young adventurer; for, in addition to
the known fact that they who amuse are much better
his situation enabled him to study those caprices
of men, which, properly improved, are of
themselves a mine of wealth, as well as to gain a
knowledge of the important truth that the greatest
events of this life are much oftener the result of
impulse than of calculation.
I have it by a direct tradition, orally conveyed
from the lips of my ancestor, that no one could
have been more lucky than himself in the character
of his master. This personage, who came, in
time, to be my maternal grandfather, was one of
those wary traders who encourage others in their
follies, with a view to his own advantage, and the
experience of fifty years had rendered him so expert
in the practices of his calling, that it was seldom
he struck out a new vein in his mine, without
finding himself rewarded for the enterprise, by a
success that was fully equal to his expectations.
“Tom,” he said one day to his apprentice, when
time had produced confidence and awakened sympathies
between them, “thou art a lucky youth, or
the parish officer would never have brought thee
to my door. Thou little knowest the wealth that
is in store for thee, or the treasures that are at thy
command, if thou provest diligent, and in particular
faithful to my interests.”—My provident grandfather
never missed an occasion to throw in a useful
moral, notwithstanding the general character of
veracity that distinguished his commerce.—“Now,
what dost think, lad, may be the amount of my
capital?”
My ancestor in the male line hesitated to reply,
for, hitherto, his ideas had been confined to the
profits; never having dared to lift his thoughts as
high as that source from which he could not but see
they flowed in a very ample stream; but thrown
quick at figures, after adding ten per cent. to the
sum which he knew the last year had given as the
nett avails of their joint ingenuity, he named the
amount, in answer to the interrogatory.
My maternal grandfather laughed in the face of
my direct lineal ancestor.
“Thou judgest, Tom,” he said, when his mirth
was a little abated, “by what thou thinkest is the
cost of the actual stock before thine eyes, when thou
should'st take into the account that which I term
our floating capital.”
Tom pondered a moment, for while he knew that
his master had money in the funds, he did not account
that as any portion of the available means
connected with his ordinary business; and as for a
floating capital, he did not well see how it could be
of much account, since the disproportion between the
cost and the selling prices of the different articles
in which they dealt was so great, that there was no
particular use in such an investment. As his master,
however, rarely paid for any thing until he was in
possession of returns from it that exceeded the debt
some seven-fold, he began to think the old man was
alluding to the advantages he obtained in the way
of credit, and after a little more cogitation, he ventured
to say as much.
Again my maternal grandfather indulged in a
hearty fit of laughter.
“Thou art clever in thy way, Tom,” he said,
“and I like the minuteness of thy calculations, for
they show an aptitude for trade; but there is genius
in our calling as well as cleverness. Come hither,
boy,” he added, drawing Tom to a window whence
they could see the neighbors on their way to church,
for it was on a Sunday that my two provident progenitors
indulged in this moral view of humanity,
thou shalt see some small portion of that capital
which thou seemest to think hid, stalking abroad
by day-light, and in the open streets. Here, thou
see'st the wife of our neighbor, the pastry-cook;
with what an air she tosses her head and displays
the bauble thou sold'st her yesterday: well, even that
slattern, idle and vain, and little worthy of trust as
she is, carries about with her a portion of my capital!”
My worthy ancestor stared, for he never knew
the other to be guilty of so great an indiscretion
as to trust a woman whom they both knew bought
more than her husband was willing to pay for.
“She gave me a guinea, master, for that which
did not cost a seven-shilling piece!”
“She did, indeed, Tom, and it was her vanity
that urged her to it. I trade upon her folly, younker,
and upon that of all mankind; now dost not
see with what a capital I carry on affairs? There
—there is the maid, carrying the idle hussy's pattens
in the rear; I drew upon my stock in that
wench's possession, no later than the last week, for
half a crown!”
Tom reflected a long time on these allusions of
his provident master, and although he understood
them about as well as they will be understood by
the owners of half the soft humid eyes and sprouting
whiskers among my readers, by dint of cogitation
he came at last to a practical understanding of the
subject, which before he was thirty he had, to use
a French term, pretty well exploité.
I learn by unquestionable tradition, received also
from the mouths of his contemporaries, that the
opinions of my ancestor underwent some material
changes between the ages of ten and forty, a circumstance
that has often led me to reflect that people
principles, during the pliable period of life, when
the mind, like the tender shoot, is easily bent aside
and subjected to the action of surrounding causes.
During the earlier years of the plastic age, my
ancestor was observed to betray strong feelings of
compassion at the sight of charity-children, nor
was he ever known to pass a child, especially a
boy that was still in petticoats, and who was crying
with hunger in the streets, without sharing his own
crust with him. Indeed, his practice on this head
was said to be steady and uniform, whenever the
rencontre took place after my worthy father had
had his own sympathies quickened by a good dinner;
a fact that may be imputed to a keener sense
of the pleasure he was about to confer.
After sixteen, he was known to converse occasionally
on the subject of politics, a topic, on which
he came to be both expert and eloquent before
twenty. His usual theme was justice and the sacred
rights of man, concerning which he sometimes
uttered very pretty sentiments, and such as
were altogether becoming in one who was at the
bottom of the great social pot that was then, as
now, actively boiling, and where he was made to
feel most, the heat that kept it in ebullition. I am
assured that on the subject of taxation, and on that
of the wrongs of America and Ireland, there were
few youths in the parish who could discourse with
more zeal and unction. About this time, too, he
was heard shouting “Wilkes and Liberty!” in the
public streets.
But, as is the case with all men of rare capacities,
there was a concentration of powers in the
mind of my ancestor, which soon brought all his
errant sympathies, the mere exuberance of acute
and overflowing feelings, into a proper and useful
capacious receptacle of self. I do not claim for
my father any peculiar quality in this respect, for I
have often observed that many of those who, (like
giddy-headed horsemen that raise a great dust, and
scamper as if the highway were too narrow for
their eccentric courses, before they are fairly seated
in the saddle, but who afterwards drive as directly
at their goals as the arrow parting from the
bow,) most indulge their sympathies at the commencement
of their careers, are the most apt towards
the close to get a proper command of their
feelings, and to reduce them within the bounds of
common sense and prudence. Before five-and-twenty,
my father was as exemplary and as constant
a devotee of Plutus, as was then to be found
between Ratcliffe Highway and Bridge Street:—I
name these places in particular, as all the rest of
the great capital in which he was born is known to
be more indifferent to the subject of money.
My ancestor was just thirty, when his master,
who like himself was a bachelor, very unexpectedly,
and a good deal to the scandal of the neighborhood,
introduced a new inmate into his frugal abode,
in the person of an infant female child. It would seem
that some one had been speculating on his stock of
weakness too, for this poor, little, defenceless and
dependent being was thrown upon his care, like
Tom himself, through the vigilance of the parish-officers.
There were many good-natured jokes
practised on the prosperous fancy-dealer, by the
more witty of his neighbours, at this sudden turn of
good fortune, and not a few ill-natured sneers were
given behind his back; most of the knowing ones
of the vicinity finding a stronger likeness between
the little girl and all the other unmarried men of
the eight or ten adjoining streets, than to the worthy
support. I have been much disposed to admit the
opinions of these amiable observers as authority in
my own pedigree, since it would be reaching the
obscurity in which all ancient lines take root, a
generation earlier than by allowing the presumption
that little Betsey was my direct male ancestor's
master's daughter; but, on reflection, I have determined
to adhere to the less popular but more simple
version of the affair, because it is connected
with the transmission of no small part of our estate,
a circumstance of itself that at once gives dignity
and importance to a genealogy.
Whatever may have been the real opinion of the
reputed father touching his rights to the honors of
that respectable title, he soon became as strongly
attached to the child, as if it really owed it existence
to himself. The little girl was carefully nursed
abundantly fed, and throve accordingly. She had
reached her third year, when the fancy-dealer took
the small-pox from his little pet, who was just recovering
from the same disease, and died at the expiration
of the tenth day.
This was an unlooked-for and a stunning blow
to my ancestor, who was then in his thirty-fifth year,
and the head-shopman of the establishment, which
had continued to grow with the growing follies and
vanities of the age. On examining his master's
will, it was found that my father, who had certainly
aided materially of late in the acquisition of the
money, was left the good-will of the shop, the command
of all the stock at cost, and the sole executorship
of the estate. He was also intrusted with the
exclusive guardianship of little Betsey, to whom his
master had affectionately devised every farthing of
his property. An ordinary reader may be surprised
that a man who had so long practised on the foibles
mere shopman, as to leave his whole estate so completely
in his power; but, it must be remembered,
that human ingenuity has not yet devised any means
by which we can carry our personal effects into the
other world; that “what cannot be cured must be
endured;” that he must of necessity have confided
this important trust to some fellow-creature, and
that it was better to commit the keeping of his money
to one, who, knowing the secret by which
it had been accumulated, had less inducement to be
dishonest, than one who was exposed to the temptation
of covetousness, without having a knowledge
of any direct and legal means of gratifying his
longings. It has been conjectured, therefore, that
the testator thought, by giving up his trade to a man
who was as keenly alive as my ancestor to all its
perfections, moral and pecuniary, he provided a
sufficient protection against his falling into the sin
of peculation, by so amply supplying him with simpler
means of enriching himself. Besides, it is fair
to presume that the long acquaintance had begotten
sufficient confidence to weaken the effect of that
saying which some wit has put into the mouth of a
wag—“make me your executor, father; I care not
to whom you leave the estate.” Let all this be as
it might, nothing can be more certain than that my
worthy ancestor executed his trust with the scrupulous
fidelity of a man whose integrity had been
severely schooled in the ethics of trade. Little Betsey
was properly educated for one in her condition of
life; her health was as carefully watched over as if
she had been the only daughter of the sovereign,
instead of the only daughter of a fancy-dealer; her
morals were superintended by a superannuated old
maid; her mind left to its original purity; her person
jealously protected against the designs of greedy
his paternal attentions and solicitudes, my vigilant
and faithful ancestor, to prevent accidents, and to
counteract the chances of life, so far as it might be
done by human foresight, saw that she was legally
married, the day she reached her nineteenth year,
to the person whom, there is every reason to think,
he believed to be the most unexceptionable man
of his acquaintance,—in other words, to himself.
Settlements were unnecessary between parties who
had so long been known to each other, and, thanks
to the liberality of his late master's will in more
ways than one, a long minority, and the industry
of the ci-devant head-shopman, the nuptial benediction
was no sooner pronounced, than our family
stepped into the undisputed possession of four hundred
thousand pounds. One less scrupulous on the
subject of religion and the law, might not have
thought it necessary to give the orphan heiress a
settlement so satisfactory, at the termination of her
wardship.
I was the fifth of the children who were the
fruits of this union, and the only one of them all,
that passed the first year of its life. My poor mother
did not survive my birth, and I can only record
her qualities through the medium of that great agent
in the archives of the family, tradition. By all that
I have heard, she must have been a meek, quiet, domestic
woman; who, by temperament and attainments,
was admirably qualified to second the prudent
plans of my father for her welfare. If she had
causes of complaint, (and that she had, there is too
much reason to think, for who has ever escaped
them?) they were concealed, with female fidelity,
in the sacred repository of her own heart; and if
truant imagination sometimes dimly drew an outline
of married happiness different from the facts that
was merely commented on by a sigh, and consigned
to a cabinet whose key none ever touched but
herself, and she seldom.
Of this subdued and unobtrusive sorrow, for I
fear it sometimes reached that intensity of feeling,
my excellent and indefatigable ancestor appeared to
have no suspicion. He pursued his ordinary occupations
with his ordinary single-minded devotion,
and the last thing that would have crossed his brain
was the suspicion that he had not punctiliously
done his duty by his ward. Had he acted otherwise,
none surely would have suffered more by his
delinquency than her husband, and none would
have a better right to complain. Now, as her husband
never dreamt of making such an accusation,
it is not at all surprising that my ancestor remained
in ignorance of his wife's feelings, to the hour of
his death.
It has been said that the opinions of the successor
of the fancy-dealer, underwent some essential
changes between the ages of ten and forty. After
he had reached his twenty-second year, or, in other
words, the moment he began to earn money for himself,
as well as for his master, he ceased to cry “Wilkes
and Liberty.” He was not heard to breathe a syllable
concerning the obligations of society towards
the weak and unfortunate, for the five years that
succeeded his majority; he touched lightly on Christian
duties in general, after he got to be worth fifty
pounds of his own; and as for railing at human follies,
it would have been rank ingratitude in one
who so very unequivocally got his bread by them.
About this time, his remarks on the subject of taxation,
however, were singularly caustic, and well
applied. He railed at the public debt, as at a public
curse, and ominously predicted the dissolution
it was hourly accumulating on the
already overloaded shoulders of the trader.
The period of his marriage and of his succession
to the hoardings of his former master, may be dated
as the second epocha in the opinions of my ancestor.
From this moment his ambition expanded, his views
enlarged in proportion to his means, and his contemplations
on the subject of his great floating capital
became more profound and philosophical. A
man of my ancestor's native sagacity, whose whole
soul was absorbed in the pursuit of gain, who had
so long been forming his mind, by dealing as it
were with the elements of human weaknesses, and
who already possessed four hundred thousand
pounds, was very likely to strike out for himself
some higher road to eminence, than that in which
he had been laboriously journeying, during the
years of painful probation. The property of my
mother had been chiefly invested in good bonds
and mortgages; her protector, patron, benefactor,
and legalized father, having an unconquerable repugnance
to confiding in that soulless, conventional,
nondescript body corporate, the public. The first
indication that was given by my ancestor of a
change of purpose in the direction of his energies,
was by calling in the whole of his outstanding debts,
and adopting the Napoleon plan of operations, by
concentrating his forces on a particular point, in
order that he might operate in masses. About this
time, too, he suddenly ceased railing at taxation.
This change may be likened to that which occurs in
the language of the ministerial journals, when they
cease abusing any foreign state with whom the nation
has been carrying on a war, that it is, at length,
believed politic to terminate; and for much the same
reason, as it was the intention of my thrifty ancestor
always treated as an enemy. The whole of the
four hundred thousand pounds were liberally intrusted
to the country, the former fancy-dealer's
apprentice entering the arena of virtuous and patriotic
speculation, as a bull; and, if with more
caution, with at least some portion of the energy
and obstinacy of the desperate animal that gives
title to this class of adventurers. Success crowned
his laudable efforts; gold rolled in upon him like
water on the flood, buoying him up, soul and body,
to that enviable height, where, as it would seem,
just views can alone be taken of society in its innumerable
phases. All his former views of life,
which, in common with others of a similar origin
and similar political sentiments, he had imbibed in
early years, and which might with propriety be
called near views, were now completely obscured
by the sublimer and broader prospect that was
spread before him.
I am afraid the truth will compel me to admit,
that my ancestor was never charitable in the vulgar
acceptation of the term; but then, he always
maintained that his interest in his fellow-creatures
was of a more elevated cast, taking a comprehensive
glance at all the bearings of good and evil,
—being of the sort of love which induces the
parent to correct the child, that the lesson of present
suffering may produce the blessings of future
respectability and usefulness. Acting on these principles,
he gradually grew more estranged from his
species in appearance; a sacrifice that was probably
exacted by the severity of his practical reproofs
for their growing wickedness, and the austere
policy that was necessary to enforce them. By
this time, my ancestor was also thoroughly impressed
with what is called the value of money; a sentiment
perception than common of the dangers of the precious
metals, as well as of their privileges and uses.
He expatiated occasionally on the guarantees that
it was necessary to give to society, for its own security;
never even voted for a parish-officer, unless
he were a warm substantial citizen; and began to be
a subscriber to the patriotic fund, and to the other
similar little moral and pecuniary buttresses of the
government, whose common and commendable
object was, to protect our country, our altars, and
our firesides.
The death-bed of my mother has been described
to me as a touching and melancholy scene. It appears
that as this meek and retired woman was
extricated from the coil of mortality, her intellect
grew brighter, her powers of discernment
stronger, and her character in every respect more
elevated and commanding. Although she had said
much less about our firesides and altars than her
husband, I see no reason to doubt that she had ever
been quite as faithful as he could be to the one, and
as much devoted to the other. I shall describe the
important event of her passage from this to a better
world, as I have often had it repeated from the
lips of one who was present, and who has had an
important agency in since making me the man I
am. This person was the clergyman of the parish,
a pious divine, a learned man, and a gentleman in
feeling as well as by extraction.
My mother, though long conscious that she was
drawing near to her last great account, had steadily
refused to draw her husband from his absorbing
pursuits, by permitting him to be made acquainted
with her situation. He knew that she was ill; very
ill, as he had reason to think; but, as he not only
allowed her, but even volunteered to order her all
(my ancestor was not a miser in the vulgar meaning
of the word,) he thought that he had done all
that man could do, in a case of life and death, interests
over which he professed to have no control.
He saw Dr. Etherington, the rector, come and go
daily, for a month, without uneasiness or apprehension,
for he thought his discourse had a tendency to
tranquillize my mother, and he had a strong affection
for all that left him, undisturbed, to the enjoyment
of the occupation in which his whole energies
were now completely centered. The physician got
his guinea at each visit, with scrupulous punctuality;
the nurses were well received and were well
satisfied, for no one interfered with their acts but
the doctor; and every ordinary duty of commission
was as regularly discharged by my ancestor,
as if the sinking and resigned creature from whom
he was about to be for ever separated, had been
the spontaneous choice of his young and fresh
affections.
When, therefore, a servant entered to say that
Dr. Etherington desired a private interview, my
worthy ancestor, who had no consciousness of
having neglected any obligation that became a
friend of church and state, was in no small measure
surprised.
“I come, Mr. Goldencalf, on a melancholy duty,”
said the pious rector, entering the private cabinet
to which his application had for the first time obtained
his admission; “the fatal secret can no
longer be concealed from you, and your wife at
length consents that I shall be the instrument of
revealing it.”
The Doctor paused; for, on such occasions it is
perhaps as well to let the party that is about to be
own imagination; and busily enough was that of my
poor father said to be exercised on this painful occasion.
He grew pale, opened his eyes until they
again filled the sockets into which they had gradually
been sinking for twenty years, and looked a
hundred questions that his tongue refused to put.
“It cannot be, Doctor,” he at length querulously
said, “that a woman like Betsey has got an ink-ling
into any of the events connected with the last
great secret expedition, and which have escaped my
jealousy and experience!”
“I am afraid, dear sir, that Mrs. Goldencalf has
obtained glimpses of the last great and secret expedition
on which we must all, sooner or later, embark,
that have entirely escaped your vigilance.—
But of this I will speak some other time. At present
it is my painful duty to inform you it is the
opinion of the physician, that your excellent wife
cannot outlive the day, if, indeed, she do the hour.”
My father was struck with this intelligence, and
for more than a minute he remained silent and
without motion. Casting his eyes towards the papers
on which he had lately been employed, and
which contained some very important calculations
connected with the next settling day, he at length
resumed:
“If this be really so, Doctor, it may be well for
me to go to her, since one in the situation of the
poor woman may indeed have something of importance
to communicate.”
“It was with this object that I have now come to
tell you the truth,” quietly answered the divine, who
knew that nothing was to be gained by contending
with the besetting weakness of such a man, at such
a moment.
My father bent his head in assent, and, first
carefully inclosing the open papers in a secretary,
he followed his companion to the bed-side of his
dying wife.
| CHAPTER I. The monikins | |