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_ Ernest was now well turned twenty-six years old, and in little more
than another year and a half would come into possession of his
money. I saw no reason for letting him have it earlier than the
date fixed by Miss Pontifex herself; at the same time I did not like
his continuing the shop at Blackfriars after the present crisis. It
was not till now that I fully understood how much he had suffered,
nor how nearly his supposed wife's habits had brought him to actual
want.
I had indeed noted the old wan worn look settling upon his face, but
was either too indolent or too hopeless of being able to sustain a
protracted and successful warfare with Ellen to extend the sympathy
and make the inquiries which I suppose I ought to have made. And
yet I hardly know what I could have done, for nothing short of his
finding out what he had found out would have detached him from his
wife, and nothing could do him much good as long as he continued to
live with her.
After all I suppose I was right; I suppose things did turn out all
the better in the end for having been left to settle themselves--at
any rate whether they did or did not, the whole thing was in too
great a muddle for me to venture to tackle it so long as Ellen was
upon the scene; now, however, that she was removed, all my interest
in my godson revived, and I turned over many times in my mind, what
I had better do with him.
It was now three and a half years since he had come up to London and
begun to live, so to speak, upon his own account. Of these years,
six months had been spent as a clergyman, six months in gaol, and
for two and a half years he had been acquiring twofold experience in
the ways of business and of marriage. He had failed, I may say, in
everything that he had undertaken, even as a prisoner; yet his
defeats had been always, as it seemed to me, something so like
victories, that I was satisfied of his being worth all the pains I
could bestow upon him; my only fear was lest I should meddle with
him when it might be better for him to be let alone. On the whole I
concluded that a three and a half years' apprenticeship to a rough
life was enough; the shop had done much for him; it had kept him
going after a fashion, when he was in great need; it had thrown him
upon his own resources, and taught him to see profitable openings
all around him, where a few months before he would have seen nothing
but insuperable difficulties; it had enlarged his sympathies by
making him understand the lower classes, and not confining his view
of life to that taken by gentlemen only. When he went about the
streets and saw the books outside the second-hand book-stalls, the
bric-a-brac in the curiosity shops, and the infinite commercial
activity which is omnipresent around us, he understood it and
sympathised with it as he could never have done if he had not kept a
shop himself.
He has often told me that when he used to travel on a railway that
overlooked populous suburbs, and looked down upon street after
street of dingy houses, he used to wonder what kind of people lived
in them, what they did and felt, and how far it was like what he did
and felt himself. Now, he said he knew all about it. I am not very
familiar with the writer of the Odyssey (who, by the way, I suspect
strongly of having been a clergyman), but he assuredly hit the right
nail on the head when he epitomised his typical wise man as knowing
"the ways and farings of many men." What culture is comparable to
this? What a lie, what a sickly debilitating debauch did not
Ernest's school and university career now seem to him, in comparison
with his life in prison and as a tailor in Blackfriars. I have
heard him say he would have gone through all he had suffered if it
were only for the deeper insight it gave him into the spirit of the
Grecian and the Surrey pantomimes. What confidence again in his own
power to swim if thrown into deep waters had not he won through his
experiences during the last three years!
But, as I have said, I thought my godson had now seen as much of the
under currents of life as was likely to be of use to him, and that
it was time he began to live in a style more suitable to his
prospects. His aunt had wished him to kiss the soil, and he had
kissed it with a vengeance; but I did not like the notion of his
coming suddenly from the position of a small shopkeeper to that of a
man with an income of between three and four thousand a year. Too
sudden a jump from bad fortune to good is just as dangerous as one
from good to bad; besides, poverty is very wearing; it is a quasi-
embryonic condition, through which a man had better pass if he is to
hold his later developments securely, but like measles or scarlet
fever he had better have it mildly and get it over early.
No man is safe from losing every penny he has in the world, unless
he has had his facer. How often do I not hear middle-aged women and
quiet family men say that they have no speculative tendency; THEY
never had touched, and never would touch, any but the very soundest,
best reputed investments, and as for unlimited liability, oh dear!
dear! and they throw up their hands and eyes.
Whenever a person is heard to talk thus he may be recognised as the
easy prey of the first adventurer who comes across him; he will
commonly, indeed, wind up his discourse by saying that in spite of
all his natural caution, and his well knowing how foolish
speculation is, yet there are some investments which are called
speculative but in reality are not so, and he will pull out of his
pocket the prospectus of a Cornish gold mine. It is only on having
actually lost money that one realises what an awful thing the loss
of it is, and finds out how easily it is lost by those who venture
out of the middle of the most beaten path. Ernest had had his
facer, as he had had his attack of poverty, young, and sufficiently
badly for a sensible man to be little likely to forget it. I can
fancy few pieces of good fortune greater than this as happening to
any man, provided, of course, that he is not damaged irretrievably.
So strongly do I feel on this subject that if I had my way I would
have a speculation master attached to every school. The boys would
be encouraged to read the Money Market Review, the Railway News, and
all the best financial papers, and should establish a stock exchange
amongst themselves in which pence should stand as pounds. Then let
them see how this making haste to get rich moneys out in actual
practice. There might be a prize awarded by the head-master to the
most prudent dealer, and the boys who lost their money time after
time should be dismissed. Of course if any boy proved to have a
genius for speculation and made money--well and good, let him
speculate by all means.
If Universities were not the worst teachers in the world I should
like to see professorships of speculation established at Oxford and
Cambridge. When I reflect, however, that the only things worth
doing which Oxford and Cambridge can do well are cooking, cricket,
rowing and games, of which there is no professorship, I fear that
the establishment of a professorial chair would end in teaching
young men neither how to speculate, nor how not to speculate, but
would simply turn them out as bad speculators.
I heard of one case in which a father actually carried my idea into
practice. He wanted his son to learn how little confidence was to
be placed in glowing prospectuses and flaming articles, and found
him five hundred pounds which he was to invest according to his
lights. The father expected he would lose the money; but it did not
turn out so in practice, for the boy took so much pains and played
so cautiously that the money kept growing and growing till the
father took it away again, increment and all--as he was pleased to
say, in self defence.
I had made my own mistakes with money about the year 1846, when
everyone else was making them. For a few years I had been so scared
and had suffered so severely, that when (owing to the good advice of
the broker who had advised my father and grandfather before me) I
came out in the end a winner and not a loser, I played no more
pranks, but kept henceforward as nearly in the middle of the middle
rut as I could. I tried in fact to keep my money rather than to
make more of it. I had done with Ernest's money as with my own--
that is to say I had let it alone after investing it in Midland
ordinary stock according to Miss Pontifex's instructions. No amount
of trouble would have been likely to have increased my godson's
estate one half so much as it had increased without my taking any
trouble at all.
Midland stock at the end of August 1850, when I sold out Miss
Pontifex's debentures, stood at 32 pounds per 100 pounds. I
invested the whole of Ernest's 15,000 pounds at this price, and did
not change the investment till a few months before the time of which
I have been writing lately--that is to say until September 1861. I
then sold at 129 pounds per share and invested in London and North-
Western ordinary stock, which I was advised was more likely to rise
than Midlands now were. I bought the London and North-Western stock
at 93 pounds per 100 pounds, and my godson now in 1882 still holds
it.
The original 15,000 pounds had increased in eleven years to over
60,000 pounds; the accumulated interest, which, of course, I had re-
invested, had come to about 10,000 pounds more, so that Ernest was
then worth over 70,000 pounds. At present he is worth nearly double
that sum, and all as the result of leaving well alone.
Large as his property now was, it ought to be increased still
further during the year and a half that remained of his minority, so
that on coming of age he ought to have an income of at least 3500
pounds a year.
I wished him to understand book-keeping by double entry. I had
myself as a young man been compelled to master this not very
difficult art; having acquired it, I have become enamoured of it,
and consider it the most necessary branch of any young man's
education after reading and writing. I was determined, therefore,
that Ernest should master it, and proposed that he should become my
steward, book-keeper, and the manager of my hoardings, for so I
called the sum which my ledger showed to have accumulated from
15,000 pounds to 70,000 pounds. I told him I was going to begin to
spend the income as soon as it had amounted up to 80,000 pounds.
A few days after Ernest's discovery that he was still a bachelor,
while he was still at the very beginning of the honeymoon, as it
were, of his renewed unmarried life, I broached my scheme, desired
him to give up his shop, and offered him 300 pounds a year for
managing (so far indeed as it required any managing) his own
property. This 300 pounds a year, I need hardly say, I made him
charge to the estate.
If anything had been wanting to complete his happiness it was this.
Here, within three or four days he found himself freed from one of
the most hideous, hopeless liaisons imaginable, and at the same time
raised from a life of almost squalor to the enjoyment of what would
to him be a handsome income.
"A pound a week," he thought, "for Ellen, and the rest for myself."
"No," said I, "we will charge Ellen's pound a week to the estate
also. You must have a clear 300 pounds for yourself."
I fixed upon this sum, because it was the one which Mr Disraeli gave
Coningsby when Coningsby was at the lowest ebb of his fortunes. Mr
Disraeli evidently thought 300 pounds a year the smallest sum on
which Coningsby could be expected to live, and make the two ends
meet; with this, however, he thought his hero could manage to get
along for a year or two. In 1862, of which I am now writing, prices
had risen, though not so much as they have since done; on the other
hand Ernest had had less expensive antecedents than Coningsby, so on
the whole I thought 300 pounds a year would be about the right thing
for him. _
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