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 fictitious,
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
pieces justificatives of my theories, as well as of my facts, I see
no better way to prepare the reader to believe me, than by giving an
unvarnished 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 indebted 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 paid than they who
instruct their fellow-creatures, 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 be 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 upon himself by so
unexpected a question, and being quick at figures, after adding ten
per cent. to the sum which he knew the last year had given as the
net avail of their joint ingenuity, he named the amount, in answered
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 shouldst 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 anything 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, as best fitted the day, "come hither, boy, and thou shalt
see some small portion of that capital which thou seemest to think
hid, stalking abroad by daylight, and in the open streets. Here,
thou seest 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 thou see with what a capital I carry on affairs? There--there
is the maid, carrying the idle hussy's patterns 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 exploite.
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 might do
well not to be too confident of the 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, 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 maybe 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 subjection, centring
all in the one absorbing and 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 afterward 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 toward 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 neighbors, 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 housekeeper who had been selected to pay for her 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 its
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 smallpox 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 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 of his species, should
have so much confidence in a 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 fortune-hunters; and, to
complete the catalogue of 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 fact that stood in
dull reality before her eyes, the picture 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 at 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 toward
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 a public
curse, and ominously predicted the dissolution of society, in
consequence of the burdens and incumbrances it was hourly
accumulating on the already overloaded shoulders of the trader.
The period of his marriage and 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 to make an ally of a power
that he had hitherto 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 a 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 which,
I believe, gives its possessor a livelier perception than common of
the dangers of the precious metals, as well as of their privileges
and uses. He expatiated occasionally on the guaranties 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 the advice and relief that money could command (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 centred.
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 forever 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 shocked receive a little of the
blow through his 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 inkling 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
toward 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 is 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 enclosing
the open papers in a secretary, he followed his companion to the
bedside of his dying wife.