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 wish to smooth the dying pillow of my
mother. 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 troubled with other people's
affairs), I think he must 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 on 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, as 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 and unweariedly employed, produced the usual 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
anything 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
toward 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 birthday 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, feudality 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 of
the same nature that is apt to have charms for 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's 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, Landsdowne, 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 more they are accustomed to throw dirt upon
their 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
misspent 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 in the first, Dr. Etherington had never spoken of forming
another connection. 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 transient cloud
obscured the sunny brightness of her 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 birthday fete 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 mystified 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 fete 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
fortunate--and, moreover, Sir Harry, while he 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 was out of the
window, for I heard her again 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 at
Tenthpig at that instant.
"If that 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 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 of us? I ask, Mr.
Goldencalf, what would 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-napeses 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 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
speculators 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.