A New Investment

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Title:     A New Investment
Author: Charles Lever [More Titles by Lever]

I am not so sure how far we ought to be grateful for it, but assuredly the fact is so, that nothing has so much tended to show the world with what little wisdom it is governed than the Telegraph. It is not merely that cabinets are no longer the sole possessors of early intelligence, though this alone was once a very great privilege; and there is no over-estimating the power conferred by the exclusive possession of a piece of important news--a battle won or lost, the outbreak of a revolution, the overthrow of a throne--even for a few hours before it became the property of the public. The telegraph, however, is the great disenchanter. The misty uncertainty, the cloud-like indistinctness that used of old to envelop all ministerial action, converting Downing Street into a sort of Olympus, and making a small mythology out of Precis-writers, is all gone, all dispersed. Three or four cold hard lines, thin and terse as the wire that conveyed them, are sworn enemies to all style, and especially to all the evasive cajoleries of those dissolving views of events diplomacy loves to revel in. What becomes of the graceful drapery in which statesmen used to clothe the great facts of the world, when a simple despatch, "fifteen words, exclusive of the address," tells the whole story? and when we have read that "the insurgents are triumphant everywhere, the king left the capital at four o'clock, a provisional government was proclaimed this morning," and suchlike, what do we care for the sonorous periods in which official priestcraft chants the downfall of a dynasty?

The great stronghold of statecraft was, however, Speculation--I mean that half-prophetic view of events which we always conceded to those who looked over the world from a higher window than ourselves. What has become of this now? Who so bold as to predict what, while he is yet speaking, may be contradicted? who is there hardy enough to forecast what the events of the last half-hour may have falsified, and five minutes more will serve to publish to the whole world?

It may be amusing to read the comments of the speech or the leading article, but the "despatch" is the substance: and however clever the variations, the original melody remains unaltered. Let any one imagine to himself a five-act drama, preceded by a telegraphic intimation of all its incidents--how insupportable would the slow procession of events become after such a revelation! Up to this, Ministers performed a sort of Greek chorus, chanting in ambiguous phrase the woes that invaded those who differed from them, and the heart-corroding sorrows that sat below the "gangway." There has come an end to all this. All the dramatic devices of those days are gone, and we live in an age in which many men are their own priests, their lawyers, and their doctors, and where, certes, each man is his own prophet.

These reflections have been much impressed upon me by a ramble I took yesterday in company with one of the most agreeable of all our diplomatists--one of those men who seem to weld into their happy natures all the qualities which make good companionship, and blend with the polished manners of a courtier the dash of an Eton boy and the deep reflectiveness of a man of the world--a man to whom nothing comes wrong, and whom you would be puzzled to say whether he was more in his element at a cabinet council, or one of a shooting-party in the Highlands.

"I say, O'Dowd," cried he, after a pause of some time in our conversation, "has it never struck you that those tall poles and wires are destined to be the end of both your trade and mine, and that within a very few years neither of our occupations will have a representative left? Take my word for it," said he, more solemnly, "in less than ten years from the present date a penny-a-liner will be as rare as a posthorse, and a post-shay not more a curiosity than a minister-plenipotentiary."

"Do you really think so?"

"I am certain of it. People nowadays won't travel eight miles an hour, or be satisfied to hear of events ten days after they've happened. Life is too short for all this now, and, as we can't lengthen our days, we must shorten our incidents. We are all more or less like that gentleman Mathews used to tell us of at Boulogne, who said to the waiter, 'Let me have some-thing expensive; I am only here for an hour.' Have you ever thought seriously on the matter?"

"Never," said I.

"You ought, then," said he. "I tell you again, we are all in the same category with flint locks and wooden ships--we belong to the past. Don't you know it? Don't you feel it?"

"I don't like to feel it," said I, peevishly.

"Nonsense!" cried he, laughing. "Self-deception does nothing in the matter, say what one will. A modern diplomatist is only a 'smooth-Bore.' What 'our own correspondent' represents, I leave to your own modesty."

"It will be a bad day for us when the world comes to that knowledge," said I, gloomily.

"Of course it will, but there's no help for it. Old novels go to the trunkmakers; second-hand uniforms make the splendour of dignity-balls in the colonies: who is to say that there may not be a limbo for us also? At all events, I have a scheme for our transition state--a plan I have long revolved in my mind--and there's certainly something in it.

"First of all realise it, as the Yankees say, that neither a government nor a public will want either of us. When the wires have told that the Grand-Duke Strong-grog-enofif was assassinated last night, or that Prince Damisseisen has divorced his wife and married a milliner, Downing Street and Printing-house Square will agree that all the moral reflections the events inspire can be written just as well in Piccadilly as from a palace on the Neva, or a den on the Danube. Gladstone will be the better pleased, and take another farthing off 'divi-divi,' or some other commodity in general use and of universal appreciation. Don't you agree to that?"

"I don't know."

"You don't know," drawled he out, in mimicry of my tone: "are you so conceited about your paltry craft that you fancy the world cares for the manner of it, or that there is really any excellence in the cookery? Not a bit of it, man. We are bores both of us; and what's worse--far worse--we are bygones. Can't you see that when a man buys a canister of prepared beef-tea, he never asks any one to pour on the boiling water--he brews his broth for himself? This is what people do with the telegrams. They don't want you or me to come in with the kettle: besides, all tastes are not alike; one man may like his Bombardment of Charleston weaker; another might prefer his Polish Massacre more highly flavoured. This is purely a personal matter. How can you suit the capricious likings of the million, and of the million--for that's the worst of it--the million that don't want you? What a practical rebuke, besides, to prosy talkers and the whole long-winded race, the sharp, short tap of the telegraph! Who would listen to a narrative of Federal finance when he has read 'Gold at 204--Chase rigged the market'? Who asks for strategical reasons in presence of 'Almighty whipping--lost eighty thousand--Fourth Michigan skedaddled '?

"How graphic will description become--how laconic all comment! You will no more listen to one of the old circumlocutionary conversers than you would travel by the waggon, or make a voyage in a collier.

"How, I would ask, could the business of life go on in an age active as ours if all coinage was in copper, and vast transactions in money should be all conducted in the base metal? Imagine the great Kings of Finance counting over the debts of whole nations in penny-pieces, and you have at once a picture of what, until a few years ago, was our intellectual condition. How nobly Demosthenic our table-talk will be!--how grandly abrupt and forensic!

"There is nothing, however, over which I rejoice more than in the utter extinction of the anecdote-mongers--the insufferable monsters who related Joe Millers as personal experiences, or gave you their own versions of something in the morning papers. Thank heaven they are done for!

"Last of all, the unhappy man who used to be sneered at for his silence in company, will now be on a par with his fellows. The most bashful will be able to blurt out, 'Poles massacred,' 'Famine in Ireland,' 'Feast at the Mansion House,' 'Collision at Croydon,' 'Bank discount eleven.'

"Who will dare to propagate scandal, when all amplification is denied him? How much adulteration will the liquor bear which is measured by drop? Nor will the least of our benefits be the long, reflective pauses--those brilliant 'flashes of silence' which will supersede the noise, turmoil, and confusion of what we used to call conversation. No, no, Corneli mi. The game is up. 'Our own Correspondent' is a piece that has run its course, and there's nothing to do but take a farewell benefit and quit the boards."

"If I could fall back on my pension like you, I'd perhaps take the matter easier," said I, gruffly.

"Well, I think you ought to be pensioned. If I was a Minister, I'd propose it. My notion is this: The proper subjects for pension are those who, if not provided for by the State, are likely to starve. They are, consequently, the class of persons who have devoted their lives to an unmarketable commodity--such as poonah-painting, Berlin-wool work, despatch-writing, and suchlike. I'd include 'penny-a-lining'--don't be offended because you get twopence, perhaps. I'd pension the whole of them--pretty much as I'd buy off the organ-man, and request him to move on."

"As, however," said I, "we are not fortunate enough to figure in the Estimates, may I ask what is the grand scheme you propose for our employment?"

"I'm coming to it. I'd have reached it ere this, if you had not required such a positive demonstration of your utter uselessness. You have delayed me by what Guizot used to call 'an obstructive indisposition to believe.'"

"Go on; I yield--that is, under protest." "Protest as much as you like. In diplomacy a protest means, 'I hope you won't; but if you will, I can't help it,' _Vide_ the correspondence about the annexation of Nice and Savoy. Now to my project. It is to start a monster hotel--one of those gigantic establishments for which the Americans are famous--in some much-frequented part of Europe, and to engage as part of the household all the 'own time' celebrities of diplomacy and letters. Every one knows--most of us have, indeed, felt--the desire experienced to see, meet, and converse with the noticeable men of the world--the people who, so to say, leave their mark on the age they live in--the cognate signs of human algebra. Only fancy, then, with what ecstasy would the traveller read the prospectus of an establishment wherein, as in a pantheon, all the gods were gathered around him. What would not the Yankee give for a seat at a table where the great Eltchi ladled out the soup, and the bland-voiced author of 'The Woman in White' lisped out, 'Sherry, sir?' Only imagine being handed one's fish by the envoy that got us into the Crimean war, or taking a potato served by the accomplished writer of 'Orley Farm'! Picture a succession of celebrities in motion around the table, and conceive, if you can, the vainglorious sentiment of the man that could say, 'Lyons, a little more fat;' or, 'Carlyle, madeira;' and imagine the luxury of that cup of tea so gracefully handed you by 'Lost and Saved,' and the culminating pride of taking your flat candlestick from the fingers of 'Eleanor's Victory.'

"Who would not cross the great globe to live in such an atmosphere of genius and grandeur? for if there be, as there may, souls dead to the charms of literary greatness, who in this advanced age of ours is indifferent to the claims of high rank and station and title? Fancy sending a K.C.B. to call a cab, or ordering a special envoy to fetch the bootjack! I dare not pursue the theme. I cannot trust myself to dwell on a subject so imbued with suggestiveness--all the varying and wondrous combinations such a galaxy of splendour and power would inevitably produce. What wit, what smartness, what epigram would abound! What a hailstorm of pleasantries, and what stories of wise aphorisms and profound reflections! How I see with my mind's eye the literary traveller trying to overhear the Attic drolleries of the waiters as they wash up their glasses, or endeavouring to decoy Boots into a stroll with a cigar, well knowing his charming article on Dickens.

"The class-writers would of course have their specialties. 'Soapy-Sponge' would figure in the stable-yard, and 'Proverbial Philosophy' watch the trains as a touter. Fabulous prices might be obtained for a room in such an establishment, and every place at the _table-d'hote_ should be five guineas at least. For, after all, what would be an invitation to Compiegne to a sojourn here? Material advantages might possibly incline to the side of the Imperial board; but would any one presume to say that the company in the one was equal to the 'service' at the other? Who would barter the glorious reality of the first for the mean and shallow mockery of the last? Last of all, how widespread and powerful would be the influence of such an establishment over the manners of our time! Would Cockneyism, think you, omit its H's in presence of that bland individual who offers him cheese? Would presumption dare to criticise in view of that 'Quarterly' man who is pouring out the bitter beer? What a check on the expansive balderdash of the 'gent' at his dessert to know and feel that 'Adam Bede' was behind him!

"Would Brown venture on that anecdote of Jones if the napkin-in-hand listener should be an ex-envoy renowned for his story-telling? Who would break down in his history, enunciate a false quantity, misquote a speech, or mistake the speaker, in such hearing? Some one might object to the position and to the functions I assign to persons of a certain distinction, and say that it was unworthy of an ex-ambassador to act as a hall-porter, or a celebrated prose-writer to clean the knives. I confess I do not think so. I shrewdly suspect a great deal of what we are pleased to call philosophy is only a well-regulated self-esteem, and that the man who feels himself immeasurably above another in mind, capacity, and attainments, and yet sees that other vastly superior in station and condition, has within his heart a pride all the more exalting that it is stimulated by the sense of a great injustice, and the profound consciousness that it is to himself, to his own nature, he must look to redress the balance that fortune would set against him.

"In the brilliant conversation of the servants' hall, then, would these many gifted men take their revenge; and what stores of good stories, what endless drolleries, what views of life, and what traits of character, would they derive from the daily opportunities! It has constantly been remarked by foreigners that there is no trait of our national manners less graceful in itself than the way in which inferiors, especially menials, are addressed in England. It is alleged, perhaps with some truth, that we mark every difference of class more decisively than other nations; and certainly in our treatment of servants there is none of that same confidential tone so amusing in a French vaudeville. The scheme I now suggest will be the effective remedy for this.

"Will Jones, think you, presume to be imperative if it be Alfred Tennyson who has brought up his hot water? Will Brown be critical about the polish, if it be Owen Meredith has taken him his boots? Will even Snooks cry out, 'Holloa, you fellow!' to a passing waiter, if the individual so addressed might chance to be an Oriental Secretary or a Saturday Reviewer?

"And would the most infatuated of Bagmen venture on what O'Connell used to call a 'chuck-under-the-chin manner,' were the chamber-maid to be Margaret Maitland?

"Such, in brief, is my plan, O'Dowd; nor is the least of its advantages that it gets rid of the Pension List, and that beggarly L1200 a-year by which wealthy England assumes to aid the destitute sons and daughters of letters. As for myself, I have fixed on my station. I mean to be swimming-master, and the prospectus shall announce that His Excellency the late Minister at the Court of-----ducks ladies every morning from eight till nine. Think over the project, and drop me a hint as to the sort of place would suit you."

[The end]
Charles Lever's essay: New Investment

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