Uxorem gratis, Caeciliane, tuam,
Dum licuit: sed nunc positis custodibus ingens
Agmen amatorum est. Ingeniosus homo es.
Nobody, Cecilianus, e'er thought of your wife (she's so ugly!)
When she could gratis be seen, when she was easily won.
Now that, with locks and with guards you pretend to secure her so snugly,
Crowds of gallants flock around: faith, it is cleverly done.
ON A BEE INCLOSED IN AMBER.
FROM MARTIAL.
Et latet et lucet Phaethontide condita gutta,
Ut videatur apis nectare clausa suo.
Dignum tantorum pretium tulit illa laborum:
Credibile est ipsam sic voluisse mori.
Lucid the bee lurks here, bright amber her beauty inclosing!
As in the nectar she made seems the fair insect to lie.
Worthy reward she has gain'd, after such busy labours reposing:
Well we might deem that herself thus would be willing to die.
THE SURVEYOR'S TALE.
Good resolutions are, like glass, manufactured for the purpose of being
broken. Immediately after my marriage, I registered in the books of my
conscience a very considerable vow against any future interference with
the railway system. The Biggleswades had turned out so well, that I
thought it unsafe to pursue my fortune any further. The incipient
gambler, I am told, always gains, through the assistance of a nameless
personage who shuffles the cards a great deal oftener than many
materialists suppose. Nevertheless, there is always a day of
retribution.
I wish I had adhered to my original orthodox determination. During the
whole period of the honeymoon, I remained blameless as to shares. Uncle
Scripio relinquished the suggestion of "dodges" in despair. He was, as
usual, brimful of projects, making money by the thousand, and bearing or
bulling, as the case might be, with genuine American enthusiasm. I
believe he thought me a fool for remaining so easily contented, and very
soon manifested no further symptom of his consciousness of my existence
than by transmitting me regularly a copy of the Railway Gazette, with
some mysterious pencil-markings at the list of prices, which I presume
he intended for my guidance in the case of an alteration of sentiment.
For some time I never looked at them. When a man is newly married, he
has a great many other things to think of. Mary had a decided genius for
furniture, and used to pester me perpetually with damask curtains,
carved-wood chairs, gilt lamps, and a whole wilderness of household
paraphernalia, about which, in common courtesy, I was compelled to
affect an interest. Now, to a man like myself, who never had any fancy
for upholstery, this sort of thing is very tiresome. My wife might have
furnished the drawingroom after the pattern of the Cham of Tartary's for
any thing I cared, provided she had left me in due ignorance of the
proceeding; but I was not allowed to escape so comfortably. I looked
over carpet patterns and fancy papers innumerable, mused upon all manner
of bell-pulls, and gave judgment between conflicting rugs, until the
task became such a nuisance, that I was fain to take refuge in the
sacred sanctuary of my club. Young women should be particularly careful
against boring an accommodating spouse. Of all places in the world, a
club is the surest focus of speculation. You meet gentlemen there who
hold stock in every line in the kingdom--directors, committeemen, and
even crack engineers. I defy you to continue an altogether uninterested
auditor of the fascinating intelligence of Mammon. In less than a week
my vow was broken, and a new _liaison_ commenced with the treacherous
Delilah of scrip. As nine-tenths of my readers have been playing the
same identical game towards the close of last year, it would be idle to
recount to them the various vicissitudes of the market. It is a sore
subject with most of us--a regular undeniable case of "_infandum
regina_." The only comfort is, that our fingers were simultaneously
burned.
Amongst other transactions, I had been induced by my old fiend Cutts,
now in practice as an independent engineer, to apply for a large
allocation of shares in the Slopperton Valley, a very spirited
undertaking, for which the Saxon was engaged to invent the gradients.
This occurred about the commencement of the great Potato Revolution--an
event which I apprehend will be long remembered by the squirearchy and
shareholders of these kingdoms. The money-market was beginning to
exhibit certain symptoms of tightness; premiums were melting perceptibly
away, and new schemes were in diminished favour. Under these
circumstances, the Provisional Committee of the Slopperton Valley
Company were beneficent enough to gratify my wishes to the full, and
accorded to me the large privilege of three hundred original shares. Two
months earlier this would have been equivalent to a fortune--as it was,
I must own that my gratitude was hardly commensurate to the high
generosity of the donors. I am not sure that I did not accompany the
receipt of my letter of allocation with certain expletives by no means
creditable to the character of the projectors--at all events, I began to
look with a milder eye upon the atrocities of Pennsylvanian repudiation.
However, as the crash was by no means certain, my sanguine temperament
overcame me, and in a fit of temporary derangement I paid the deposit.
In the ensuing week the panic became general. Capel-court was deserted
by its herd--Liverpool in a fearful state of commercial coma--Glasgow
trembling throughout its Gorbals--and Edinburgh paralytically shaking.
The grand leading doctrine of political economy once more was recognised
as a truth: the supply exorbitantly exceeded the demand, and there were
no buyers. The daily share-list became a far more pathetic document in
my eyes than the Sorrows of Werter. The circular of my brokers, Messrs
Tine and Transfer, contained a tragedy more woful than any of the
conceptions of Shakspeare--the agonies of blighted love are a joke
compared with those of baffled avarice; and of all kinds of consumption,
that of the purse is the most severe. One circumstance, however, struck
me as somewhat curious. Neither in share-list nor circular could I find
any mention made of the Slopperton Valley. It seemed to have risen like
an exhalation, and to have departed in similar silence. This boded ill
for the existence of the L750 I had so idiotically invested, the
recuperation whereof, in whole or in part, became the subject of my
nightly meditations; and, as correspondence in such matters is usually
unsatisfactory, I determined to start personally in search of my
suspended deposit.
I did not know a single individual of the Slopperton Provisional
Committee, but I was well enough acquainted with Cutts, whose present
residence was in a midland county of England, where the work of railway
construction was going actively forward. As I drove into the town where
the Saxon had established his headquarters, I saw with feelings of
peculiar disgust immense gangs of cut-throat looking fellows--"the
navies of the nations," as Alfred Tennyson calls them--busy at their
embankments, absorbing capital at an alarming ratio, and utterly
indifferent to the state of the unfortunate shareholders then writhing
under the pressure of calls. Philanthropy is a very easy thing when our
own circumstances are prosperous, but a turn of the wheel of fortune
gives a different complexion to our views. If I had been called upon two
months earlier to pronounce an oration upon the vast benefits of general
employment and high wages, I should have launched out _con amore_. Now,
the spectacle which I beheld suggested no other idea than that of an
enormous cheese fast hastening to decomposition and decay beneath the
nibbling of myriads of mites.
I found Cutts in his apartment of the hotel in the unmolested enjoyment
of a cigar. He seemed fatter, and a little more red in the gills than
when I saw him last, otherwise there was no perceptible difference.
"Hallo, old fellow!" cried the Saxon, pitching away a pile of estimates;
"what the mischief has brought you up here? Waiter--a bottle of sherry!
You wouldn't prefer something hot at this hour of the morning, would
you?"
"Certainly not."
"Ay--you're a married man now. How's old Morgan? Lord! what fun we had
at Shrewsbury when I helped you to your wife!"
"So far as I recollect, Mr Cutts, you nearly finished that business. But
I want to have a serious talk with you about other matters. What has
become of that confounded Slopperton Valley, for which you were
engineer?"
"Slopperton Valley! Haven't you heard about it? The whole concern was
wound up about three weeks ago. Take a glass of wine."
"Wound up? Why, this is most extraordinary. I never received any
circular!"
"I thought as much," said Cutts very coolly. "That's precisely what I
said to old Hasherton, the chairman, the day after the secretary bolted.
I told him he should send round notice to the fellows at a distance,
warning them not to cash up; but it seems that the list of subscribers
had gone amissing, and so the thing was left to rectify itself."
"Bolted! You don't mean Mr Glanders, of the respectable firm of Glanders
and Co?"
"Of course I do. I wonder you have not heard of it. That comes of living
in a confounded country where there are neither breeches nor
newspapers--help yourself--and no direct railway communication. Glanders
bolted as a matter of course, and I can tell you that I thought myself
very lucky in getting hold of as much of the deposits as cleared my
preliminary expenses."
"Cutts--are you serious?"
"Perfectly. But what's the use of making a row about it? You look as
grim as if there was verjuice in the sherry. You ought to thank your
stars that the thing was put a stop to so soon."
"Why--didn't you recommend me to apply for shares?"
"Of course I did, and I wonder you don't feel grateful for the advice.
Every body thought they would have come out at a high premium. I would
not have taken six pounds for them in the month of September; but this
infernal potato business has brought on the panic, and nobody will table
a shilling for any kind of new stock. It was a lucky thing for us that
we got a kind of hint to draw in our horns in time."
"And pray, since the concern is wound up, as you say, how much of our
deposit-money will be returned?"
"You don't mean to say," said Cutts, with singularly elaborate
articulation--"You don't mean to say that you were such an inconceivable
ass as to pay up your letter of allotment? Well--I never heard of such a
piece of deliberate infatuation! Why, man, a blacksmith with half an eye
must have seen that the game was utterly up a week before the calls were
due. I don't think there is a single man out of Scotland who would have
made such a fool of himself; indeed, so far as I know, nobody cashed up
except a dozen old women who knew nothing about the matter, and ten
landed proprietors, who expected compensation, and deserved to be done
accordingly. You need not look as though you meditated razors. The
Biggleswade concern will pay for this more than thirty tines over."
"I'll tell you what, Cutts," said I in a paroxysm, "this is a most
nefarious transaction, and I'm hanged if I don't take the law with every
one connected with it. I'll make an example of that fellow Hasherton,
and the whole body of the committee."
"Just as you like," replied the imperturbable Cutts. "You're a lawyer,
and the best judge of those sort of things. I may, however, as well
inform you that Hasherton went into the Gazette last week, and that you
won't find another member of the committee at this moment within the
four seas of Great Britain."
"And pray, may I ask how _you_ came to be connected with so
discreditable a project? Do you know that it is enough to blast your own
reputation for ever?"
"I know nothing of the kind," said the Saxon, commencing another cigar.
"I look to the matter of employment, and have nothing to do with the
character of my clients, beyond ascertaining their means of liquidating
my account. The committee required the assistance of a first-rate
engineer, and I flatter myself they could hardly have made a more
unexceptionable selection. But what's the use of looking sulky about it?
You can't help yourself; and, after all, what's the amount of your loss?
A parcel of pound-notes that would have lain rotting in the bank had you
not put them into circulation! Cheer up, Fred, you've made at least one
individual very happy. Glanders is going it in New York. I shouldn't be
surprised if half your deposit money is already invested in
mint-juleps."
"It is very easy for you to talk, Mr Cutts," said I, with considerable
acrimony. "Your account, at all events, appears to have been paid.
Doubtless you looked sharply after that. I cannot help putting my own
construction upon the conduct of a gentleman who makes a direct profit
out of the misfortunes of his friends."
"You affect me deeply," said Cutts, applying himself diligently to the
decanter; "but you don't drink. Do you know you put me a good deal in
mind of Macready? Did you ever hear him in Lear,
'How sharper than a serpent's thanks it is
To have a toothless child?'"
You're remarkably unjust, Fred, as you will acknowledge in your cooler
moments. I am hurt by your ingratitude--I am," and the sympathizing
engineer buried his face in the folds of a Bandana handkerchief.
I knew, by old experience, that it was of no use to get into a rage with
Cutts. After all, I had no tenable ground of complaint against him; for
the payment of the deposit money was my own deliberate act, and it was
no fault of his that the shares were not issued at a premium. I
therefore contrived to swallow, as I best could, my indignation, though
it was no easy matter. Seven hundred and fifty pounds is a serious sum,
and would have gone a long way towards the furnishing of a respectable
domicile.
I believe that Cutts, though he never allowed himself to exhibit a
symptom of ordinary regret, was internally annoyed at the confounded
scrape in which I was landed by following his advice. At all events he
soon ceased comporting himself after the manner of the comforters of
Job, and finally undertook to look after my interest in case any
fragment of the deposits could be rescued from the hands of the
Philistines. I have since had a letter from him with the information
that he has recovered a hundred pounds--a friendly exertion which shall
be duly acknowledged so soon as I receive a remittance, which, however,
has not yet come to hand.
By the time we had finished the sherry, I was restored, if not to
good-humour, at least to a state of passive resignation. The Saxon gave
strict orders that he was to be denied to every body, and made some
incoherent proposals about "making a forenoon of it," which, however, I
peremptorily declined.
"It's a very hard thing," said Cutts, "but I see it's an invariable rule
that matrimony and good-fellowship can never go together. You're not
half the brick you used to be, Fred; but I suppose it can't be helped.
There's a degree of slow-coachiness about you which I take to be
peculiarly distressing, and if you don't take care it will become a
confirmed habit."
"Seven hundred and fifty pounds--what! all my pretty chickens and
their"----
Don't swear! It's a highly immoral practice. At all events you'll dine
with me to-day at six. You shall have as much claret as you can
conscientiously desire, and, for company, I have got the queerest fellow
here you ever set eyes on. You used to pull the long bow with
considerable effect, but this chap beats you hollow."
"Who is he?"
"How should I know? He calls himself Leopold Young Mandeville--is a
surveyor by trade, and has been working abroad at some outlandish line
or another for the last two years. He is a very fair hand at the
compasses, and so I have got him here by way of assistant. You may think
him rather dull at first, but wait till he has finished a pint, and I'm
shot if he don't astonish you. Now, if you will have nothing more, we
may as well go out, and take a ride by way of appetizer."
At six o'clock I received the high honour of an introduction to Mr Young
Mandeville. As I really consider this gentleman one of the most
remarkable personages of the era in which we live, I may perhaps be
excused if I assume the privilege of an acquaintance, and introduce him
also to the reader. The years of Mr Mandeville could hardly have
exceeded thirty. His stature was considerably above the average of
mankind, and would have been greater save for the geometrical curvature
of his lower extremities, which gave him all the appearance of a walking
parenthesis. His hair was black and streaky; his complexion atrabilious;
his voice slightly raucous, like that of a tragedian contending with a
cold. The eye was a very fine one--that is, the right eye--for the other
optic was evidently internally damaged, and shone with an opalescent
lustre. There was a kind of native dignity about the man which impressed
me favourably, notwithstanding the reserved manner in which he
exchanged the preliminary courtesies.
Cutts did the honours of the table with his usual alacrity. The dinner
was a capital one, and the vine not only abundant but unexceptionable.
At first, however, the conversation flowed but languidly. My spirits had
not yet recovered from the appalling intelligence of the morning; nor
could I help reflecting, with a certain uneasiness, upon the reception I
was sure to meet with from certain brethren in the Outer House, to whom,
in a moment of rash confidence, I had entrusted the tale of my dilemma.
I abhor roasting in my own person, and yet I knew I should have enough
of it. Mandeville eat on steadily, like one labouring under the
conviction that he thereby performed a good and meritorious action, and
scorning to mix up extraneous matter with the main object of his
exertions. The Saxon awaited his time, and steadily circulated the
champagne.
We all got more loquacious after the cloth was removed. A good dinner
reconciles one amazingly to the unhappy chances of our lot; and, before
the first bottle was emptied, I had tacitly forgiven every one of the
Provisional Committee of the Slopperton Railway Company, with the
exception of the villainous Glanders, who, for any thing I knew, might,
at that moment, be transatlantically regaling himself at my particular
expense. His guilt was of course inexpiable. Mandeville, having eat like
an ogre, began to drink like a dromedary. Both the dark and the
opalescent eye sparkled with unusual fire, and with a sigh of
philosophic fervour he unbuttoned the extremities of his waistcoat.
"Help yourselves, my boys," said the jovial Cutts; "there's lots of time
before us between this and the broiled bones. By Jove, I'm excessively
thirsty! I say, Mandeville, were you ever in Scotland? I hear great
things of the claret there."
"I never had that honour," replied Mr Young Mandeville, "which I
particularly regret, for I have a high--may I say the highest?--respect
for that intelligent country, and indeed claim a remote connexion with
it. I admire the importance which Scotsmen invariably attach to pure
blood and ancient descent. It is a proof, Mr Cutts, that with them the
principles of chivalry are not extinct, and that the honours which
should be paid to birth alone, are not indiscriminately lavished upon
the mere acquisition of wealth."
"Which means, I suppose, that a lot of rubbishy ancestors is better than
a fortune in the Funds. Well--every man according to his own idea. I am
particularly glad to say, that I understand no nonsense of the kind.
There's Fred, however, will keep you in countenance. He say--but I'll be
hanged if I believe it--that he is descended from some old king or
another, who lived before the invention of breeches."
"Cutts--don't be a fool!"
"Oh, by Jove, it's quite true!" said the irreverent Saxon; "you used to
tell me about it every night when you were half-seas over at Shrewsbury.
It was capital fun to hear you, about the mixing of the ninth tumbler."
"Excuse me, sir," said Mr Mandeville, with an appearance of intense
interest--"do you indeed reckon kindred with the royal family of
Scotland? I have a particular reason personal to myself in the inquiry."
"Why, if you really want to know about it," said I, looking, I suppose,
especially foolish, for Cutts was evidently trotting me out, and I more
than half suspected his companion--"I do claim--but it's a ridiculous
thing to talk of--a lineal descent from a daughter of William the Lion."
"You delight me!" said Mr Mandeville. "The connexion is highly
respectable--I have myself some of that blood in my veins, though
perhaps of a little older date than yours; for one of my ancestors,
Ulric of Mandeville, married a daughter of Fergus the First. I am very
glad indeed to make the acquaintance of a relative after the lapse of so
many centuries."
I returned a polite bow to the salutation of my new-found cousin, and
wished him at the bottom of the Euxine.
"Will you pardon me, Mr Cutts, if I ask my kinsman a question or two
upon family affairs? The older cadets of the royal blood have seldom an
opportunity of meeting."
"Fire away," said the Saxon, "but be done with it as soon as you can."
"Reduced as we are," continued Mr Mandeville, addressing himself to me,
"in numbers as well as circumstances, it appears highly advisable that
we should maintain some intercourse with each other for the preservation
of our common rights. These, as we well know, had their origin before
the institution of Parliaments, and therefore are by no means fettered
or impugned by any of the popular enactments of a later age. Now, as you
are a lawyer, I should like to have your opinion on a point of some
consequence. Did you ever happen to meet our cousin, Count Ferguson of
the Roman Empire?"
"Never heard of him in my life," said I.
"Any relation of the fellow who couldn't get into the lodging-house?"
asked Cutts.
"I do not think so, Mr Cutts," replied Mandeville, mildly. "I had the
pleasure of making the Count's acquaintance at Vienna. He is, apprehend,
the only heir-male extant to the Scottish crown, being descended from
Prince Fergus and a daughter of Queen Boadicea. Now, you and I, though
younger cadets, and somewhat nearer in succession, merely represent
females, and have therefore little interest beyond a remote contingency.
But I understand it is the fact that the ancient destination to the
Scottish crown is restricted to heirs-male solely; and therefore I wish
to know, whether, as the Stuarts have failed, the Count is not entitled
to claim in right of his undoubted descent?"
I was petrified at the audacity of the man. Either he was the most
consummately impudent scoundrel I ever had the fortune to meet, or a
complete monomaniac! I looked him steadily in the face. The fine black
eye was bent upon me with an expression of deep interest, and something
uncommonly like a tear was quivering in the lash. Palpable monomania!
"It seems a very doubtful question," said I. "Before answering it, I
should like to see the Count's papers, and take a look at our older
records."
"That means, you want to be fee'd," said Cutts. "I'll tell you what, my
lads, I'll stand this sort of nonsense no longer. Confound your
Fergusons and Boadiceas! One would think, to hear you talk, that you
were not a couple of as ordinary individuals as ever stepped upon
shoe-leather, but princes of the blood-royal in disguise. Help
yourselves, I say, and give us something else."
"I fear, Mr Cutts," said Mandeville, in a deep and chokey voice, "that
you have had too little experience of the vicissitudes of the world to
appreciate our situation. You spoke of a prince. Know, sir, that you see
before you one who has known that dignity, but who never shall know it
more! O Amalia, Amalia!--dear wife of my bosom--where art thou now!
Pardon me, kinsman--your hand--I do not often betray this weakness, but
my heart is full, and I needs must give way to its emotion." So saying,
the unfortunate Mandeville bowed down his head and wept; at least, so I
concluded, from a succession of severe eructations.