It illustrates the romantic element in modern commerce that my uncle
met young Moggs at a city dinner—I think it was the Bottle-makers’
Company—when both were some way advanced beyond the initial sobriety of
the occasion. This was the grandson of the original Moggs, and a very
typical instance of an educated, cultivated, degenerate plutocrat. His
people had taken him about in his youth as the Ruskins took their John
and fostered a passion for history in him, and the actual management of
the Moggs’ industry had devolved upon a cousin and a junior partner.
Mr. Moggs, being of a studious and refined disposition, had just
decided—after a careful search for a congenial subject in which he
would not be constantly reminded of soap—to devote himself to the
History of the Thebaid, when this cousin died suddenly and precipitated
responsibilities upon him. In the frankness of conviviality, Moggs
bewailed the uncongenial task thus thrust into his hands, and my uncle
offered to lighten his burden by a partnership then and there. They
even got to terms—extremely muzzy terms, but terms nevertheless.
Each gentleman wrote the name and address of the other on his cuff, and
they separated in a mood of brotherly carelessness, and next morning
neither seems to have thought to rescue his shirt from the wash until
it was too late. My uncle made a painful struggle—it was one of my
business mornings—to recall name and particulars.
“He was an aquarium-faced, long, blond sort of chap, George, with
glasses and a genteel accent,” he said.