I was somewhere about sixteen when, on going home for the holidays, I
found my mother's brother settled among the household lares. Uncle
Jack, as he was familiarly called, was a light-hearted, plausible,
enthusiastic, talkative fellow, who had spent three small fortunes in
trying to make a large one.
Uncle Jack was a great speculator; but in all his speculations he
never affected to think of himself,--it was always the good of his
fellow-creatures that he had at heart, and in this ungrateful world
fellow-creatures are not to be relied upon! On coming of age, he
inherited £6000 from his maternal grandfather. It seemed to him then
his fellow-creatures were sadly imposed upon by their tailors. Those
ninth-parts of humanity notoriously eked out their fractional
existence by asking nine times too much for the clothing which
civilisation, and perhaps a change of climate, render more necessary
to us than to our ancestors the Picts. Out of pure philanthropy, Uncle
Jack started "_a Grand National Benevolent Clothing Company_," which
undertook to supply the public with inexpressibles of the best Saxon
cloth at 7s. 6d. a pair; coats, superfine, £1, 18s.; and waistcoats at
so much per dozen. They were all to be worked off by steam. Thus the
rascally tailors were to be put down, humanity clad, and the
philanthropists rewarded (but that was a secondary consideration) with
a clear return of 30 per cent. In spite of the evident charitableness
of this Christian design, and the irrefragable calculations upon which
it was based, this company died a victim to the ignorance and
unthankfulness of our fellow-creatures. And all that remained of
Jack's £6000 was a fifty-fourth share in a small steam-engine, a large
assortment of ready-made pantaloons, and the liabilities of the
directors.
Uncle Jack disappeared, and went on his travels. The same spirit of
philanthropy which characterised the speculations of his purse
attended the risks of his person. Uncle Jack had a natural leaning
towards all distressed communities: if any tribe, race, or nation was
down in the world, Uncle Jack threw himself plump into the scale to
redress the balance. Poles, Greeks, (the last were then fighting the
Turks,) Mexicans, Spaniards,--Uncle Jack thrust his nose into all
their squabbles! Heaven forbid I should mock thee, poor Uncle Jack!
for those generous predilections towards the unfortunate; only,
whenever a nation is in misfortune, there is always a job going on!
The Polish cause, the Greek cause, the Mexican cause, and the Spanish
cause, are necessarily mixed up with loans and subscriptions. These
Continental patriots, when they take up the sword with one hand,
generally contrive to thrust the other deep into their neighbours'
breeches' pockets. Uncle Jack went to Greece, thence he went to Spain,
thence to Mexico. No doubt he was of great service to these afflicted
populations, for he came back with unanswerable proof of their
gratitude in the shape of £3000. Shortly after this appeared a
prospectus of the "New, Grand, National Benevolent Insurance Company,
for the Industrious Classes." This invaluable document, after setting
forth the immense benefits to society arising from habits of
providence, and the introduction of insurance companies--proving the
infamous rate of premiums exacted by the existent offices, and their
inapplicability to the wants of the honest artisan, and declaring that
nothing but the purest intentions of benefiting their fellow-creatures,
and raising the moral tone of society, had led the directors to
institute a new society, founded on the purest principles and the most
moderate calculations--proceeded to demonstrate that twenty-four and a
half per cent was the smallest possible return the shareholders could
anticipate. The company began under the fairest auspices: an
archbishop was caught as president, on the condition always that he
should give nothing but his name to the society. Uncle Jack--more
euphoniously designated as "the celebrated philanthropist, John Jones
Tibbets, Esquire"--was honorary secretary, and the capital stated at
two millions. But such was the obtuseness of the industrious classes,
so little did they perceive the benefits of subscribing
one-and-ninepence a-week from the age of twenty-one to fifty, in order
to secure at the latter age the annuity of £18, that the company
dissolved into thin air, and with it dissolved also Uncle Jack's
£3000. Nothing more was then seen or heard of him for three years. So
obscure was his existence, that on the death of an aunt, who left him
a small farm in Cornwall, it was necessary to advertise that "If John
Jones Tibbets, Esq., would apply to Messrs Blunt and Tin, Lothbury,
between the hours of ten and four, he would hear of something to his
advantage." But, even as a conjuror declares that he will call the ace
of spades, and the ace of spades, that you thought you had safely
under your foot, turns up on the table--so with this advertisement
suddenly turned up Uncle Jack. With inconceivable satisfaction did the
new land-owner settle himself in his comfortable homestead. The farm,
which was about two hundred acres, was in the best possible condition,
and saving one or two chemical preparations, which cost Uncle Jack,
upon the most scientific principles, thirty acres of buckwheat, the
ears of which came up, poor things, all spotted and speckled, as if
they had been inoculated with the small-pox, Uncle Jack for the first
two years was a thriving man. Unluckily, however, one day Uncle Jack
discovered a coal-mine in a beautiful field of swedish turnips; in
another week the house was full of engineers and naturalists, and in
another month appeared, in my uncle's best style, much improved by
practice, a prospectus of "the Grand, National, anti-Monopoly Coal
Company, instituted on behalf of the poor Householders of London, and
against the Monster Monopoly of the London Coal Wharfs.
"A vein of the finest coal has been discovered on the estates of the
celebrated philanthropist, John Jones Tibbets, Esq. This new mine, the
Molly Wheel, having been satisfactorily tested by that eminent
engineer, Giles Compass, Esq., promises an inexhaustible field to the
energies of the benevolent and the wealth of the capitalist. It is
calculated that the best coals may be delivered, screened, at the
mouth of the Thames, for 18s. per load, yielding a profit of not less
than forty-eight per cent to the shareholders. Shares, £50, to be paid
in five instalments. Capital to be subscribed, one million. For
shares, early application must be made to Messrs Blunt and Tin,
solicitors, Lothbury."
Here, then, was something tangible for fellow-creatures to go
on--there was land, there was a mine, there was coal, and there
actually came shareholders and capital. Uncle Jack was so persuaded
that his fortune was now to be made, and had, moreover, so great a
desire to share the glory of ruining the monster monopoly of the
London wharfs, that he refused a very large offer to dispose of the
property altogether, remained chief shareholder, and removed to
London, where he set up his carriage, and gave dinners to his
fellow-directors. For no less than three years did this company
flourish, having submitted the entire direction and working of the
mines to that eminent engineer, Giles Compass--twenty per cent was
paid regularly by that gentleman to the shareholders, and the shares
were at more than cent per cent, when, one bright morning, when least
expected, Giles Compass, Esq. removed himself to that wider field for
genius like his, the United States; and it was discovered that the
mine had for more than a year run itself into a great pit of water,
and that Mr Compass had been paying the shareholders out of their own
capital. My uncle had the satisfaction this time of being ruined in
very good company: three doctors of divinity, two county members, a
Scotch lord, and an East India director, were all in the same
boat,--that boat which went down with the coal-mine into the great
water pit!
It was just after this event that Uncle Jack, sanguine and
light-hearted as ever, suddenly recollected his sister, Mrs Caxton;
and not knowing where else to dine, thought he would repose his limbs
under my father's _trabes citrea_, which the ingenious W. S. Landor
opines should be translated "mahogany." You never saw a more charming
man than Uncle Jack. All plump people are more popular than thin
people. There is something jovial and pleasant in the sight of a round
face! What conspiracy could succeed when its head was a lean and
hungry-looking fellow, like Cassius? If the Roman patriots had had
Uncle Jack amongst them, perhaps they would never have furnished a
tragedy to Shakspeare. Uncle Jack was as plump as a partridge--not
unwieldy, not corpulent, not obese, not "_vastus_," which Cicero
objects to in an orator--but every crevice comfortably filled up. Like
the ocean, "time wrote no wrinkles on his glassy (or brassy) brow."
His natural lines were all upward curves, his smile most ingratiating,
his eye so frank, even his trick of rubbing his clean well-fed
English-looking hands, had something, about it coaxing and
_debonnair_, something that actually decoyed you into trusting your
money into hands so prepossessing. Indeed, to him might be fully
applied the expression--"Sedem animæ in extremis digitis habet;" "He
had his soul's seat in his finger ends." The critics observe that few
men have ever united in equal perfection the imaginative with the
scientific or musing faculties. "Happy he," exclaims Schiller, "who
combines the enthusiast's warmth with the worldly man's light"--light
and warmth, Uncle Jack had them both. He was a perfect symphony of
bewitching enthusiasm and convincing calculation. Dicæopolis in the
_Acharnenses_, in presenting a gentleman called Nicharchus to the
audience, observes--"He is small, I confess, but there is nothing lost
in him: all is knave, that is not fool." Parodying the equivocal
compliment, I may say, that though Uncle Jack was no giant, there was
nothing lost in him. Whatever was not philanthropy was arithmetic, and
whatever was not arithmetic was philanthropy. He would have been
equally dear to Howard and to Cocker. Uncle Jack was comely,
too--clear-skinned and florid, had a little mouth, with good teeth,
wore no whiskers, shaved his beard as close as if it were one of his
grand national companies; his hair, once somewhat sandy, was now
rather grayish, which increased the respectability of his appearance,
and he wore it flat at the sides and raised in a peak at the top; his
organs of constructiveness and ideality were pronounced by Mr Squills
to be prodigious, and those freely developed bumps gave great breadth
to his forehead. Well-shaped, too, was Uncle Jack, about five feet
eight, the proper height for an active man of business. He wore a
black coat; but to make the nap look the fresher, he had given it the
relief of gilt buttons, on which were wrought a small crown and
anchor; at a distance this button looked like the king's button, and
gave him the air of one who has a place about Court. He always wore a
white neckcloth without starch, a frill and a diamond pin; which last
furnished him with observations upon certain mines of Mexico, which he
had a great but hitherto unsatisfied desire of seeing worked by a
Grand National United Britons Company. His waistcoat of a morning was
pale buff--of an evening, embroidered velvet; wherewith were connected
sundry schemes of an "association for the improvement of native
manufactures." His trousers, matutinally, were of the colour vulgarly
called "blotting-paper;" and he never wore boots, which, he said,
unfitted a man for exercise, but short drab gaiters and square-toed
shoes. His watch-chain was garnished with a vast number of seals: each
seal, indeed, represented the device of some defunct company, and they
might be said to resemble the scalps of the slain, worn by the
aboriginal Iroquois, concerning whom indeed he had once entertained
philanthropic designs, compounded of conversion to Christianity on the
principles of the English Episcopal Church, and of an advantageous
exchange of beaver-skins for bibles, brandy, and gunpowder.
That Uncle Jack should win my heart was no wonder; my mother's he had
always won from her earliest recollection of his having persuaded her
to let her great doll (a present from her godmother) be put up to a
raffle for the benefit of the chimney-sweeps. "So like him--so good!"
she would often say pensively; "they paid sixpence a-piece for the
raffle--twenty tickets, and the doll cost £2. Nobody was taken in, and
the doll, poor thing, (it had such blue eyes!) went for a quarter of
its value. But Jack said nobody could guess what good the ten
shillings did to the chimney-sweeps!" Naturally enough, I say, my
mother liked Uncle Jack! but my father liked him quite as well, and
that was a strong proof of my uncle's powers of captivation. However,
it is noticeable that when some retired scholar is once interested in
an active man of the world, he is more inclined to admire him than
others are. Sympathy with such a companion gratifies at once his
curiosity and his indolence: he can travel with him, scheme with him,
fight with him, go with him through all the adventures of which his
own books speak so eloquently, and all the time never stir from his
easy-chair. My father said "that it was like listening to Ulysses to
hear Uncle Jack!" Uncle Jack, too, had been in Greece and Asia Minor,
gone over the site of the siege of Troy, eat figs at Marathon, shot
hares in the Peloponnesus, and drank three pints of brown stout at the
top of the Great Pyramid.
Therefore, Uncle Jack was like a book of reference to my father.
Verily at times he looked on him _as_ a book, and took him down after
dinner as he would a volume of Dodwell or Pausanias. In fact, I
believe that scholars who never move from their cells are not the less
an eminently curious, bustling, active race, rightly understood. Even
as old Burton saith of himself--"Though I live a collegiate student,
and lead a monastic life, sequestered from those tumults and troubles
of the world, I hear and see what is done abroad, how others run,
ride, turmoil and macerate themselves in town and country," which
citation sufficeth to show that scholars are naturally the most active
men of the world, only that while their heads plot with Augustus,
fight with Julius, sail with Columbus, and change the face of the
globe with Alexander, Attila, or Mahomet, there is a certain
mysterious attraction, which our improved knowledge of mesmerism will
doubtless soon explain to the satisfaction of science, between that
extremer and antipodal part of the human frame, called in the vulgate
"the seat of honour," and the stuffed leather of an armed-chair.
Learning somehow or other sinks down to that part in which it was
first driven in, and produces therein a leaden heaviness and weight,
which counteract those lively emotions of the brain, that might
otherwise render students too mercurial and agile for the safety of
established order. I leave this conjecture to the consideration of
experimentalists in the physics.
I was still more delighted than my father with Uncle Jack. He was full
of amusing tricks, could conjure wonderfully, make a bunch of keys
dance a hornpipe, and if ever you gave him half-a-crown, he was sure
to turn it into a halfpenny. He was only unsuccessful in turning my
halfpennies into half-crowns.
We took long walks together, and in the midst of his most diverting
conversation my uncle was always an observer. He would stop to examine
the nature of the soil, fill my pockets (not his own) with great lumps
of clay, stones, and rubbish, to analyse when he got home, by the help
of some chemical apparatus he had borrowed from Mr Squills. He would
stand an hour at a cottage door, admiring the little girls who were
straw-platting, and then walk into the nearest farm-houses, to suggest
the feasibility of "a national straw-plat association." All this
fertility of intellect was, alas! wasted in that "ingrata terra" into
which Uncle Jack had fallen. No squire could be persuaded into the
belief that his mother-stone was pregnant with minerals; no farmer
talked into weaving straw-plat into a proprietary association. So,
even as an ogre, having devastated the surrounding country, begins to
cast a hungry eye on his own little ones, Uncle Jack's mouth, long
defrauded of juicier and more legitimate morsels, began to water for a
bite of my innocent father.