 | CHAPTER III. The monikins |  |
3. CHAPTER III.
Opinions of our author's ancestor, together with some of his
own, and some of other people's.
Dr. Etherington was both a pious man and a
gentleman. The second son of a baronet of ancient
lineage, he had been educated in most of the
opinions of his caste, and possibly he was not entirely
above its prejudices; but, this much admitted,
few divines were more willing to defer to the ethics
and principles of the bible, than himself. His humility
had, of course, a decent regard to station;
his charity was judiciously regulated by the articles
of faith; and his philanthropy was of the discriminating
character that became a warm supporter
of church and state.
In accepting the trust which he was now obliged
to assume, he had yielded purely to a benevolent
Acquainted with the character of her husband, he
had committed a sort of pious fraud, in attaching
the condition of the endowment to his consent;
for, notwithstanding the becoming language of his
own rebuke, the promise, and all the other little
attendant circumstances of the night, it might be
questioned which felt the most surprise after the
draft was presented and duly honored, he who found
himself in possession, or he who found himself deprived,
of the sum of ten thousand pounds sterling.
Still, Dr. Etherington acted with the most scrupulous
integrity in the whole affair; and, although I
am aware, that a writer who has so many wonders
to relate, as must of necessity adorn the succeeding
pages of this manuscript, should observe a guarded
discretion in drawing on the credulity of his readers,
truth compels me to add, that every farthing
of the money was duly invested, with a single eye
to the wishes of the dying Christian, who, under
Providence, had been the means of bestowing so
much gold on the poor and unlettered. As to the
manner in which the charity was finally improved,
I shall say nothing, since no inquiry, on my part,
has ever enabled me to obtain such information as
would justify my speaking with authority.
As for myself, I shall have little more to add
touching the events of the succeeding twenty years.
I was baptized, nursed, breeched, schooled, horsed,
confirmed, sent to the university and graduated,
much as befalls all gentlemen of the established
church, in the United Kingdoms of Great Britain
and Ireland, or, in other words, of the land of my
ancestor. During these pregnant years, Dr. Etherington
acquitted himself of a duty that, judging by a very
predominant feeling of human nature, (which, singularly
enough, renders us uniformly averse to being
have found sufficiently vexatious, quite as well as
my good mother had any right to expect. Most
of my vacations were spent at his rectory; for he
had first married, then become a father, next a
widower, and had exchanged his town-living for
one in the country, between the periods of my mother's
death and that of my going to Eton; and,
after I quitted Oxford, much more of my time was
passed beneath his friendly roof, than beneath that of
my own parent. Indeed, I saw little of the latter.
He paid my bills, furnished me with pocket-money,
and professed an intention to let me travel after I
should reach my majority. But, satisfied with
these proofs of paternal care, he appeared willing
to let me pursue my own course very much in my
own way.
My ancestor was an eloquent example of the
truth of that political dogma which teaches the
efficacy of the division of labor. No manufacturer
of the head of a pin ever attained greater dexterity
in his single-minded vocation, than was reached by
my father in the one pursuit to which he devoted,
so far as human ken could reach, both soul and
body. As any sense is known to increase in acuteness
by constant exercise, or any passion by indulgence,
so did his ardor in favor of the great object
of his affections grow with its growth, and become
more manifest as an ordinary observer would be
apt to think the motive of its existence at all had
nearly ceased. This is a moral phenomenon that
I have often had occasion to observe, and which
there is some reason to think, depends on a principle
of attraction that has hitherto escaped the sagacity
of the philosophers, but which is as active
in the immaterial, as is that of gravitation in the
material world. Talents like his, so incessantly
fruits. He grew richer hourly, and, at the time
of which I speak, he was pretty generally known
to the initiated, to be the warmest man who had
any thing to do with the stock exchange.
I do not think that the opinions of my ancestor
underwent as many material changes between the
ages of fifty and seventy, as they had undergone
between the ages of ten and forty. During the
latter period, the tree of life usually gets deep root,
its inclination is fixed, whether obtained by bending
to the storms, or by drawing towards the light;
and it probably yields more in fruits of its own,
than it gains by tillage and manuring. Still my
ancestor was not exactly the same man the day
he kept his seventieth birth-day, as he had been
the day he kept his fiftieth. In the first place, he
was worth thrice the money at the former period,
that he had been worth at the latter. Of course
his moral system had undergone all the mutations
that are known to be dependent on a change of
this important character. Beyond a question,
during the last five-and-twenty years of the life of
my ancestor, his political bias, too, was in favor of
exclusive privileges and exclusive benefits. I do
not mean that he was an aristocrat in the vulgar
acceptation. To him, feodality was a blank; he
had probably never heard the word. Portcullises
rose and fell, flanking towers lifted their heads, and
embattled walls swept around their fabrics in vain,
so far as his imagination was concerned. He cared
not for the days of courts leet and courts baron;
nor for the barons themselves; nor for the honors
of a pedigree (why should he?—no prince in the
land could more clearly trace his family into obscurity,
than himself,) nor for the vanities of a
court, nor for those of society; nor for aught else
the weak-minded, the imaginative, or the conceited.
His political prepossessions showed themselves
in a very different manner. Throughout the whole
of the five lustres I have named, he was never
heard to whisper a censure against government,
let its measures, or the character of its administration,
be what it would. It was enough for him
that it was government. Even taxation no longer
excited his ire, nor aroused his eloquence. He conceived
it to be necessary to order, and especially
to the protection of property, a branch of political
science that he had so studied, as to succeed in
protecting his own estate, in a measure, against
even this great ally itself. After he became worth
a million, it was observed that all his opinions grew
less favorable to mankind in general, and that he
was much disposed to exaggerate the amount and
quality of the few boons which Providence has
bestowed on the poor. The report of a meeting
of the whigs, generally had an effect on his appetite;
a resolution that was suspected of emanating
from Brookes', commonly robbed him of a dinner,
and the radicals never seriously moved that he did
not spend a sleepless night, and pass a large portion
of the next day, in uttering words that it
would be hardly moral to repeat. I may without
impropriety add, however, that on such occasions,
he did not spare allusions to the gallows: Sir Francis
Burdett, in particular, was a target for a good
deal of billingsgate; and men as upright and as
respectable even as my lords Grey, Lansdowne,
and Holland, were treated as if they were no better
than they should be. But, on these little details
it is unnecessary to dwell, for it must be a subject
of common remark, that the more elevated and
refined men become in their political ethics, the
neighbors. I will just state, however, that most
of what I have here related, has been transmitted
to me by direct oral traditions, for I seldom saw
my ancestor, and when we did meet, it was only
to settle accounts, to eat a leg of mutton together,
and to part like those who, at least, have never
quarrelled.
Not so with Dr. Etherington. Habit (to say
nothing of my own merits) had attached him to
one who owed so much to his care, and his doors
were always as open to me, as if I had been his
own son.
It has been said, that most of my idle time
(omitting the part mispent in the schools) was
passed at the rectory.
The excellent divine had married a lovely
woman, a year or two after the death of my mother,
who had left him a widower, and the father
of a little image of herself, before the expiration
of a twelvemonth. Owing to the strength of his
affections for the deceased, or for his daughter, or
because he could not please himself in a second
marriage as well as it had been his good fortune to
do so in the first, Dr. Etherington had never spoken
of forming another connexion. He appeared content
to discharge his duties, as a Christian and a
gentleman, without increasing them by creating
any new relations with society.
Anna Etherington was of course my constant
companion, during many long and delightful visits at
the rectory. Three years my junior, the friendship
on my part had commenced by a hundred acts of
boyish kindness. Between the ages of seven and
twelve, I dragged her about in a garden-chair,
pushed her on the swing, and wiped her eyes and
uttered words of friendly consolation, when any
childhood. From twelve to fourteen, I told her
stories; astonished her with narratives of my own
exploits at Eton, and caused her serene blue eyes
to open in admiration, at the marvels of London.
At fourteen, I began to pick up her pocket-handkerchief,
hunt for her thimble, accompany her in duets,
and to read poetry to her, as she occupied herself
with the little lady-like employments of the needle.
About the age of seventeen, I began to compare
cousin Anna, as I was permitted to call her, with the
other young girls of my acquaintance, and the comparison
was generally much in her favor. It was
also about this time, that, as my admiration grew
more warm and manifest, she became less confiding,
and less frank: I perceived too that, for a novelty,
she now had some secrets that she did not choose
to communicate to me, that she was more with her
governess, and less in my society than formerly,
and, on one occasion (bitterly did I feel the slight)
she actually recounted to her father the amusing
incidents of a little birth-day fête at which she
had been present, and which was given by a gentleman
of the vicinity, before she even dropped a
hint to me, touching the delight she had experienced
on the occasion! I was, however, a good
deal compensated for the slight, by her saying,
kindly, as she ended her playful and humorous account
of the affair,—
“It would have made you laugh heartily, Jack,
to see the droll manner in which the servants acted
their parts;” (there had been a sort of mistified
masque) “more particularly the fat old butler, of
whom they had made a Cupid, as Dick Griffin said,
in order to show that Love becomes drowsy and dull
by good eating and drinking—I do wish you could
have been there, Jack.”
Anna was a gentle feminine girl, with a most
lovely and winning countenance, and I did inherently
like to hear her pronounce the word “Jack”—
it was so different from the boisterous screech of
the Eton boys, or the swaggering call of my boon
companions, at Oxford!
“I should have liked it excessively myself, Anna,”
I answered; “more particularly as you seem to
have so much enjoyed the fun.”
“Yes, but that could not be”—interrupted Miss-Mrs.
Norton, the governess.—“For Sir Harry Griffin
is very difficult about his associates, and you
know, my dear, that Mr. Goldencalf, though a very
respectable young man himself, could not expect
one of the oldest Baronets of the county, to go out
of his way to invite the son of a stock-jobber to be
present at a fête given to his own heir.”
Luckily for Miss-Mrs. Norton, Dr. Etherington
had walked away, the moment his daughter ended
her recital, or she might have met with a disagreeable
commentary on her notions concerning the fitness
of associations. Anna herself looked earnestly
at her governess, and I saw a flush mantle over her
sweet face, that reminded me of the ruddiness of
morn. Her soft eyes then fell to the floor, and it
was some time before she spoke.
The next day I was arranging some fishing-tackle
under a window of the library, where my person
was concealed by the shrubbery, when I heard the
melodious voice of Anna wishing the rector good
morning. My heart beat quicker as she approached
the casement, tenderly inquiring of her parent
how he had passed the night. The answers were
as affectionate as the questions, and then there
was a little pause.
“What is a stock-jobber, father?” suddenly resumed
Anna, whom I heard rustling the leaves
above my head.
“A stock-jobber, my dear, is one who buys and
sells in the public funds, with a view to profit.”
“And is it thought a particularly disgraceful
employment?”
“Why, that depends on circumstances. On
'Change it seems to be well enough—among merchants
and bankers, there is some odium attached
to it, I believe.”
“And can you say why, father?”
“I believe,” said Dr. Etherington, laughing, “for
no other reason than that it is an uncertain calling
—one that is liable to sudden reverses—what is
termed gambling—and whatever renders property
insecure, is sure to obtain odium among those
whose principal concern is its accumulation; those
who consider the responsibility of others of essential
importance to themselves.”
“But is it a dishonest pursuit, father?”
“As the times go, not necessarily, my dear;
though it may readily become so.”
“And is it disreputable, generally, with the
world?”
“That depends on circumstances, Anna. When
the stock-jobber loses, he is very apt to be condemned;
but I rather think his character rises in
proportion to his gains. But why do you ask these
singular questions, love?”
I thought I heard Anna breathe harder than
usual, and it is certain that she leaned far out of
the window, to pluck a rose.
“Why, Mrs. Norton said, Jack was not invited
to Sir Harry Griffin's, because his father was a
stock-jobber. Do you think she was right, sir?”
“Very likely, my dear,” returned the divine,
who I fancied was smiling at the question. “Sir
Harry has the advantages of birth, and he probably
did not forget that our friend Jack was not so
values himself on his wealth, is not as rich as
Jack's father, by a million or two—in other words,
as they say on 'Change, Jack's father could buy
ten of him. This motive was perhaps more likely
to influence him than the first. In addition, Sir
Harry is suspected of gambling himself in the
funds, through the aid of agents; and a gentleman
who resorts to such means to increase his fortune,
is a little apt to exaggerate his social advantages,
by way of a set-off to the humiliation.”
“And gentlemen do really become stock-jobbers,
father?”
“Anna, the world has undergone great changes
in my time. Ancient opinions have been shaken,
and governments themselves are getting to be
little better than political establishments to add
facilities to the accumulation of money. This is
a subject, however, you cannot very well understand,
nor do I pretend to be very profound in it,
myself.”
“But is Jack's father really so very, very rich?”
asked Anna, whose thoughts had been wandering
from the thread of those pursued by her father.
“He is believed to be so.”
“And Jack is his heir?”
“Certainly—he has no other child; though it is
not easy to say, what so singular a being may do
with his money.”
“I hope he will disinherit Jack!”
“You surprise me, Anna!—You, who are so
mild and reasonable, to wish such a misfortune to
befall our young friend, John Goldencalf!”
I gazed upward in astonishment, at this extraordinary
speech of Anna, and, at the moment, I
would have given all my interest in the fortune in
question, to have seen her face, (most of her body
rustling the bush above my head,) in order to judge
of her motive by its expression; but an envious
rose grew exactly in the only spot where it was
possible to get a glimpse.
“Why do you wish so cruel a thing?” resumed
Dr. Etherington, a little earnestly.
“Because I hate stock-jobbing, and its riches,
father. Were Jack poorer, it seems to me, he
would be better esteemed.”
As this was uttered, the dear girl drew back,
and I then perceived that I had mistaken her cheek
for one of the largest and most blooming of the
flowers. Dr. Etherington laughed, and I distinctly
heard him kiss the blushing face of his daughter.
I think I would have given up my hopes in another
million, to have been the rector of Tenthpig, at
that instant.
“If this be all, child,” he answered, “set thy
heart at rest. Jack's money will never bring him
into contempt, unless through the use he may
make of it. Alas! Anna, we live in an age of
corruption and cupidity! Generous motives appear
to be lost sight of, in the general desire of
gain; and he who would manifest a disposition to
a pure and disinterested philanthropy, is either distrusted
as a hypocrite, or derided as a fool. The
accursed revolution among our neighbors, the
French, has quite unsettled opinions, and religion
itself has tottered in the wild anarchy of theories,
to which it has given rise. There is no worldly
advantage that has been more austerely denounced
by the divine writers, than riches, and yet it is fast
rising to be the god of the ascendant. To say nothing
of an hereafter, society is getting to be corrupted
by it to the core, and even respect for birth
is yielding to the mercenary feeling.”
“And do you not think pride of birth, father, a
mistaken prejudice, as well as pride of riches?”
“Pride of any sort, my love, cannot exactly be
defended on evangelical principles; but surely
some distinctions among men are necessary, even
for quiet. Were the levelling principle acknowledged,
the lettered and the accomplished must
descend to an equality with the ignorant and vulgar,
since all men cannot rise to the attainments
of the former class, and the world would retrograde
to barbarism. The character of a Christian
gentleman is much too precious to trifle with, in
order to carry out an impracticable theory.”
Anna was silent. Probably she was confused
between the opinions which she most liked to cherish,
and the faint glimmerings of truth to which
we are reduced, by the ordinary relations of life.
As for the good rector himself, I had no difficulty
in understanding his bias, though neither his premises
nor his conclusions possessed the logical clearness
that used to render his sermons so delightful,
more especially when he preached about the higher
qualities of the Saviour's dispensation, such as
charity, love of our fellows, and, in particular, the
imperative duty of humbling ourselves before God.
A month after this accidental dialogue, chance
made me the auditor of what passed between my
ancestor and Sir Joseph Job, another celebrated
dealer in the funds, in an interview that took place
in the house of the former, in Cheapside. As the
difference was so patent, as the French express
it, I shall furnish the substance of what passed.
“This is a serious and a most alarming movement,
Mr. Goldencalf,” observed Sir Joseph, “and
calls for union and cordiality among the holders
of property. Should these damnable opinions get
fairly abroad among the people, what would become
become of us?”
“I agree with you, Sir Joseph, it is very alarming!—frightfully
alarming!”
“We shall have Agrarian laws, sir.—Your money,
sir, and mine,—our hard earnings, will become
the prey of political robbers, and our children
will be beggared, to satisfy the envious longings
of some pitiful scoundrel without a six-pence!”
“'Tis a sad state of things, Sir Joseph; and
government is very culpable that it don't raise at
least ten new regiments.”
“The worst of it is, good Mr. Goldencalf, that
there are some jack-a-napes of the aristocracy
who lead the rascals on, and lend them the sanction
of their names. It is a great mistake, sir,
that we give so much importance to birth in this
island, by which means proud beggars set unwashed
blackguards in motion, and the substantial subjects
are the sufferers. Property, sir, is in danger,
and property is the only true basis of society.”
“I am sure, Sir Joseph, I never could see the
smallest use in birth.”
“It is of no use, but to beget pensioners, Mr.
Goldencalf.—Now, with property, it is a different
thing—money is the parent of money, and by
money a state becomes powerful and prosperous.
But this accursed revolution among our neighbors,
the French, has quite unsettled opinions, and, alas!
property is in perpetual danger!”
“Sorry am I to say, I feel it to be so in every
nerve of my body, Sir Joseph.”
“We must unite and defend ourselves, Mr.
Goldencalf, else both you and I, men warm enough
and substantial enough at present, will be in the
ditch. Do you not see that we are in actual danger
of a division of property?”
“God forbid!”
“Yes, sir, our sacred property is in danger!”
Here, Sir Joseph shook my father cordially by
the hand, and withdrew. I find, by a memorandum
among the papers of my deceased ancestor,
that he paid the broker of Sir Joseph, that day
month, sixty-two thousand seven hundred and
twelve pounds of difference, (as bull and bear,)
owing to the fact of the knight having got some
secret information through a clerk in one of the
offices; an advantage that enabled him, in this instance,
at least, to make a better bargain than one
who was generally allowed to be among the
shrewdest calculators on 'Change.
My mind was of a nature to be considerably
exercised, (as the pious purists express it,) by becoming
the depository of sentiments so diametrically
opposed to each other, as those of Dr. Etherington
and those of Sir Joseph Job. On the one side, I
was taught the degradation of birth; on the other,
the dangers of property. Anna was usually my
confidant, but on this subject I was tongue-tied,
for I dared not confess that I had overheard the
discourse with her father, and I was compelled to
digest the contradictory doctrines by myself, in the
best manner I could.
| CHAPTER III. The monikins | |