A RAZOR TO CUT CABBAGES.
An old man told me one day that he had spent fifty years of his life in
making a concordance of the Bible—he had never heard of Cruden’s work.
The labour of fifty years thrown away! I know another who sank all his
savings in publishing a Law Compendium he had compiled, and when it was
published sold two copies.
Jingles was going through a heart-breaking experience. He was
discovering that all he had acquired in school and university was a
disadvantage to him in the position in which he now found himself.
He had been well educated, had been polished and sharpened; but the
money spent on his education might as well have been thrown into the
sea, and the time devoted to learning have been as profitably given up
to billiards.
This would not have been the case had Giles Inglett Saltren been able to
enter a learned profession, but as this was out of the question, his
education was profitless. He had been qualified to take his place in a
social class in which he was no more able to show himself.
One day Jingles had given his razor to a boy to sharpen for him. The lad
took it to a grindstone and put an edge to the back. “Please, sir,” said
the fellow when reprimanded, “the front was middling sharp, so I thought
I’d put an edge to the back.” Jingles remembered this incident now with
some bitterness. He had been sharpened on the wrong side for cutting his
way. He was a classic scholar, knew his Æschylus and Euripides, and
could write elegant Latin verses. He was disciplined in the manners and
habits of the upper class. But he knew little of modern languages, and
his working out a sum in compound addition left much to be desired.
At first he looked out for such a situation as would suit him, but
speedily discovered that what he must find was a situation which he
would suit.
A librarianship, a secretaryship, lastly a tutorship, commended
themselves to him as situations for which he was qualified; but such
situations are few, and the applicants are legion.
The paralytic in the Gospel was always wanting to be let down into
Siloam after the troubling of the water, but invariably found that some
one else had stepped in whilst he was being carried, or was laboriously
dragging himself to the brink. It was so with Jingles. When he did hear
of a vacancy that would suit him, and made application for it, it was to
find that another had stepped in before him.
He tried for private pupils. He was ready to attend any house and teach
during the day. He would prefer that to being again taken into a family
as a resident tutor, but he was not even as successful as Nicholas
Nickleby. There were no little Miss Kenwigses to be taught.
He had a difficulty about giving references. He could not mention Lady
Lamerton, and invite inquiries concerning him of the family at Orleigh
Park. At first he was reluctant to apply to his uncle for a testimonial,
or for leave to use his name, but when he found that his way was blocked
through lack of references, he swallowed his pride and asked the
requisite permission of Mr. Welsh. The leave was granted and conduced to
nothing.
If pride could have fattened, about this time Jingles ought to have
grown plump, he swallowed so much of it; but it was like blackbeetles to
a cat—it made him grow lanker.
He spent a good deal of money in advertising in the daily papers, but
got no answers. Then he took to answering advertisements, and met with
no better success. Then he applied to agents, paid fees, and got no
further. It was to the advantage of these go-betweens to put bad men in
good posts, and thrust good men into bad posts, to plant square men into
round holes, and round men in square holes.
Every change brought an additional fee, and naturally this consideration
had its influence on the agents.
There was a whole class of middle schools conducted by speculative men
without education themselves, for the sons of tradesmen and farmers,
where the teaching given was of the worst description, and the moral
supervision was of the most inefficient quality. The ushers in these
were Germans, Swiss, and French, men out of pocket and out at elbows,
picking up a wretched subsistence, and eating as their daily diet humble
pie. The doors of these “Academies for Young Gentlemen” were closed to
Saltren because he was an University man and a scholar. He was
dangerous, he knew too much, and might expose the hollowness of these
swindles.
Convinced at length that there was no hope of his getting any place such
as he would like, in which his acquirements would avail, Jingles turned
to commercial life. But here also he found that his education stood in
the way. He went to Mincing Lane in quest of a clerkship in one of the
great tea, rice, sugar, and spice firms; but there an accountant and not
a logician was wanted.
Next he visited Mark Lane and sought admission into one of the great
corn-factors’ offices. He was too raw for these men; what were wanted in
such houses as these in Mark and Mincing Lanes were sharp lads of from
seventeen to nineteen, trained at Board Schools, who could reckon
rapidly, and were not above being sent messages; lads who would be filed
into business shape, who were disciplinable to take a special line, not
young men educated already and with their heads stuffed with matter
utterly useless for business.
In a state of discouragement Jingles next visited Lloyds. There it was
the same. What did he want? To become an underwriter! Well and good, let
him deposit five thousand pounds and find a clerk at two hundred, with
five per cent, on all transactions, till he had himself thoroughly
mastered the system of underwriting. He could not afford this. He must
be taken on as clerk. Where? At Lloyds, or at one of the Marine
Insurance offices that has its base at Lloyds. What did he know of the
work? The clerk has to go round with policies to be initialed, and when
the books return to the office after four o’clock, he has to make them
up. What did he understand about the value of cargoes and the risks run?
There was no place for him in a Marine Insurance. Some one recommended
him to try stockbroking.
Like a greenhorn, as he was, Jingles made at once for the Exchange, and
passing the porters, entered the House. The vast space was crowded. The
din bewildered him. He heard names shouted from the telegraph offices,
the call of porters, the voices of the stock-jobbers raised in dispute
or argument. All at once an exclamation, “Seventeen hundred.”[1] Then
ensued a gravitation towards himself, and in a moment his hat was
knocked over his eyes, then he was thrust, elbowed, jostled from side to
side.
When he recovered his sight, his hat was snatched from his hand and
flung across the House. Next, his umbrella was wrenched from him, and
with it he was struck over the back.
“You have no right in here, sir,” said a porter.
“Don’t mind him,” shouted a dozen around. “We are heartily glad to make
your acquaintance.”
The horseplay was resumed, and as the young man’s blood rose, and he
resented the treatment, and showed fight, he was still more roughly
handled, and finally found himself kicked and hustled out of the
Exchange.
Giles Saltren stood on the step without, minus a hat and umbrella, and
with his coat split down the back—his best coat put on to produce a good
impression on employers—stood dazed and humbled, an object of derision
to match-boys and flower-girls who danced about him, with words and
antics of mockery.
Presently an old white-haired stockbroker, who came out of the Exchange,
noticed him, and stopped and spoke to him, and bade him not be angry.
What had occurred was due to his having intruded where he had no right
to be. Jingles answered that he had gone there because he was in quest
of employment, whereupon he was told he might just as well have jumped
into the Thames because he desired engagement on a penny steamer.
“Young gentleman,” said the broker, “it is of no use your looking for
employment in our line of business. We have a Clerks’ Provident Fund, to
which every clerk out of employ subscribes; and if a broker wants a man
at forty, sixty, a hundred, two hundred pounds, he applies to the
secretary of the Provident Fund, who furnishes him with the man he wants
out of the number of those then disengaged. You have no experience, or
you would not have ventured into the House. If I want an errand boy, I
take on the son of a clerk. You have, I fear, no connexions in the line
to speak a word for you! You have been to the University, do you say?”
The broker whistled.
“My good sir, I do not recommend you to waste time in applying at
stockbrokers’ offices; you are likely to make acquaintance with the
outside only of their office doors. There is more chance for the son of
a bed-maker or a chimney-sweep than for you.”
Giles Saltren next sought admission into a bank, but found that this was
a business even more close than that of stock-jobbing. The banking
business was like the sleeping Brynhild, surrounded by a _waberlohe_, a
wall of flame; and he was no Siegfried to spur his horse through the
ring of fire.
Having discovered how futile were his attempts to enter a bank, he
turned to the docks, in hopes of getting a situation in a
shipping-office, only there also to meet with rebuff.
Then he saw an advertisement from a West-End shop-keeper, one of those
giants of trade, who has an universal store. There was a vacancy in the
stocking department for a young man. Applicants were to appear
personally at a fixed hour on Friday next.
Giles Inglett hesitated before he could resolve to offer himself as a
counter-jumper, and acquire the “What can we serve you next with,
ma’am?” To descend to the counter from the Oxford schools was a great
descent; but Jingles was like a vessel in stress of weather, throwing
overboard all her lading. Away must go his Greek, his Latin, his logic,
his position as an University scholar, that of a gentleman, his
self-esteem, certainly, his self-respect to some extent, his ambition
altogether.
But why not? He was not born to be a gentleman; it was by a happy
accident that he had been given an education that furnished him with
most accomplishments which adorn a man of birth and standing. He must
remember that he was not entitled by his parentage to anything above a
shopman’s place, and must gulp down this junk of pride.
On the appointed day Saltren went to Westbourne Grove, and found that he
was but one of between three or four hundred young men, applicants for
the vacancy behind the stocking counter. His appearance, delicate and
refined, the diffidence with which he spoke, were against him, and he
found himself at once and decisively rejected, and a vulgar young fellow
at his side, full of self-conceit, was chosen instead.
Saltren made application in other offices, but always without success:
his ignorance of shorthand was against him. In the offices of solicitors
it is indispensable that shorthand be practised by the clerks. It
facilitates and expedites the dictation of letters.
So also, had he been a proficient in shorthand, he might have obtained
work as a reporter at meetings. But to his grief he discovered that all
the education he had received which tended to broaden the mind was
valueless, that only was profitable which contracted the intellect.
Saltren, moreover, was speedily given to understand that unless he went
in search of a situation with gold in his hand, he could get nothing.
With capital, his intellectual culture would be graciously overlooked
and excused. His university education was such a drawback, that it could
only be forgiven if he put money into the concern where he proposed to
enter.
Saltren had come to the end of his own resources, and he saw that
without capital he could get admission nowhere. He could not obtain a
clerkship in any kind of business; the sole chance of entering a
commercial life was to become a partner in one.
There was abundance of advertisements for partners in the daily papers,
but nearly all the businesses, when examined, proved unsatisfactory, and
the risk of losing all too great. Giles Saltren had, indeed, no capital
of his own; but he resolved, should he see a chance of making an
investment that was safe, and one which would give him work in a
partnership, to propose to his mother that she should in this manner
dispose of the purchase-money for Chillacot. She would derive from it an
annual sum as interest, and have the satisfaction as well of knowing
that she had found employment for her son.
At last he found what he sought, and sanguine as to the results, he came
to his mother’s lodgings to make the proposal to her.
“Please, Mr. Saltren,” said the landlady; “your mother has gone out with
the admiral.”
“The admiral?”
“Ah, the admiral, sir!” said the landlady, with a knowing smile. “You
don’t mean to say, Mr. Saltren, that your mother hasn’t told you? and a
beautiful breakfast spread, and a cake with a cupid at top all made of
sugar.”
“But what admiral? We know no admiral!”
“What, not Admiral Tubb? Well, now, Mr. Saltren, who would have thought
your mother would have been so sly as not to have told you that she was
going to give you a new pa?”
“Upon my word, I do not understand you.”
“Then, Mr. Saltren, you come along with me, and see the breakfast laid
in the dining-room, and the beautiful wedding-cake all over
orange-flowers. It does seem sharp work too, when your father died so
very recently; but if widows don’t seize the moments as they fly, and
take admirals by the forelock, they may be left in their weeds till it
is too late. Why, bless me, Mr. Saltren, here they come!
“But,” persisted Jingles, much astonished, and almost persuaded that
Mrs. Bankes, the lodging-house-keeper, had gone off her head, “what
admiral?”
“Admiral Tubb, sir, R.N. Your mother told me so. There they are. Lawk,
sir! he in lavender don’t-mention-ems and yaller gloves; and she in a
beautiful Brussels veil that must have cost ten pounds, and the cabby
wearing of a favour.”
Into the house sailed Mrs. Saltren—Saltren no more, but Tubb—with a long
white veil over her head, and orange-blossoms in her hand, wearing a
grey silk gown. Captain Tubb advanced with her on his arm, and looked
red and sheepish.
“My child,” said Marianne, “come and salute your new father. This
distinguished officer—I mean,” she hesitated and corrected herself,
“Bartholomew Tubb has prevailed on me to lay aside my widow’s cap for
the bridal-veil. And, oh! my Giles, you will be pleased to hear that the
capital I got through the sale of Chillacot is to be sunk in the old
quarry, and me and the admiral—I mean Tubb—are going to join hands and
pump the water out.”
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Footnote 1:
This was the original number on Exchange, and the call is one to
attract attention to an unwarranted intrusion.