Transcriber’s Note
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[Illustration:
A
MAN MADE OF MONEY.
BY
DOUGLAS JERROLD.
WITH TWELVE ILLUSTRATIONS ON STEEL
BY JOHN LEECH.
LONDON:
PUBLISHED AT THE
PUNCH OFFICE,
85, FLEET STREET.
1849.
]
LONDON:
BRADBURY AND EVANS, PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.
[Illustration: _Mr. Jericho when can you let me have some Money?_]
A MAN MADE OF MONEY.
CHAPTER I.
“Mr. Jericho, when can you let me have some money?”
This curious question was coldly put by a gentlewoman in morning
undress to a man in gown and slippers. The reader, who is always
permitted to wear the old cloak of the old stage mystery—the cloak
that maketh invisible—must at once perceive the tender relation that
lives and flourishes between the interesting person who puts this
familiar interrogative, and the being who suffers it. They are man
and wife. The marriage certificate is legible in every line of Mrs.
Jericho’s face. She asks for money with a placid sense of right; it
may be, strengthened by the assurance that her debtor cannot escape
her. For it is a social truth the reader may not have overlooked,
that if a man be under his own roof, he must be at home to his own
wife.
“I ask again, Mr. Jericho, when can you let me have some money?”
Mr. Jericho made no answer. He could not precisely name the time;
and he knew that whatever promise he made, its performance would be
sternly exacted of him by the female then demanding. Whereupon, Mr.
Jericho laid down his pen, and resignedly upturned his eyeballs to
the ceiling.
“When—can—you—let—me—have—some—money?”
There is a terrible sort of torture, the manner of which is to let
fall cold water drop by drop upon the shaven head of the sufferer.
We think Mrs. Jericho had never heard of this cruelty; and we are
almost prepared to be bound for her, that she would have suffered
herself to be cut into little diamond pieces ere, knowing the mode
of torment, she would in any way have imitated it. And upon her
incorporate self too—her beloved husband! Impossible. Nevertheless
love, in its very idleness—like a giddy and rejoicing kitten—will
sometimes wound when most playful. The tiny, tender claws _will_ now
and then transgress the fur.
Mrs. Jericho, without at all meaning it, distilled the question,
letting it fall, cold syllable by cold syllable, upon the naked ear
of her husband. Mr. Jericho bounced up in his chair; and then, like a
spent ball, dropt dumbly down again. He had for a few moments raised
himself above the earthy and material query of Mrs. Jericho, and with
his eyes fixed upon the ceiling, was contemplating an antipodean fly
that holding on with the rest of his legs, was passing two of them
over his head and collar-bone, as flies are accustomed curiously to
do. Mr. Jericho—so rapid is thought, especially when followed by a
creditor—Mr. Jericho had already taken refuge in the republic of
flies—for that flies, unlike bees, are not monarchical, is plain
to any man who contemplates their equality and familiarity in his
sugar-basin and other places—and was beginning to envy the condition
of that domestic insect that had the run of his house, the use of
his very finest furniture, gratis,—when he, the nominal master, the
apparent possessor thereof, had truly no lawful hold thereupon.
What shall we say of a man of a decent and compact figure, a man of
middle height; who nevertheless wishing to stand two inches taller
in the world than fairly beseems him, consents to be stretched by
the rack in the hope of walking the higher for the pulling?—Now Mr.
Jericho was this foolish man. He wanted to stand higher in the world
than his simple means allowed him; and he had submitted himself to
the rack of debt, to be handsomely drawn out. To get appearance upon
debt is, no doubt, every bit as comfortable as to get height upon the
rack. The figure may be expanded; but how the muscle of the heart,
how all the joints are made to crack for it.
Mrs. Jericho—when last she spoke—dropt her question in the coldest,
and most measured manner. Mr. Jericho, recalled from the land of
flies, with curved lips, looked silently, sternly at the life-tenant
of his bosom. And now the syllables fall hotly, heavily, as drops of
molten lead.
“When can I have some money?” and Mrs. Jericho’s figure naturally
rose with the question.
Mr. Jericho jumped from his seat the better to measure himself to his
wife’s attitude. His first purpose was to swear; the oath was ready;
but some good anatomical genius twitched a muscle, the jaw of Jericho
closed, and the unuttered aspick died upon his tongue. He would not
swear; he would not enter upon that coward’s privilege; he felt the
soreness of great provocation; felt that the smallest and least
offensive oath would do him sudden and mysterious good. Nevertheless,
he swallowed the emotion, striking his breast to keep the passion
down. He would be cold as cream.
Mrs. Jericho, however, having the right of arithmetic upon her
side, repeated her question; asking it with a terrible calmness,
at the same time, as though to make the query stinging, waving her
right hand before her husband’s face, with a significant and snaky
motion.—“When can I have some money?”
“Woman!” cried Jericho, vehemently; as though at once and for ever he
had emptied his heart of the sex; and, rushing from the room, he felt
himself in the flattering vivacity of the moment a single man. The
transient feeling fell from him as he ran up stairs; and ere he had
begun to shave, all his responsibilities returned with full weight
upon him. “I’m sure, after all, I do my best to love the woman,”
thought Jericho, as he lathered his chin, “and yet she will ask for
money.”
Mrs. Jericho, baffled but not subdued, half-confessed to herself that
there never was such a man; and then, beginning a little household
song—familiar to families as winter robin—she thought she would go
out. She wanted to make a little purchase. She had tried it before;
there was nothing like shopping for lowness of spirits; and—yes,
she remembered—she wanted many things. She would go forth; and—as
Jericho was in his airs—she would lay out money on both sides of the
street.
And Mr. Jericho, as he shaved, quietly built up the scheme of a day’s
pleasure for himself and three special friends. As his wife was in
one of her aggravating tempers, he thought it an opportunity—sinful
to let pass—to have a little quiet dinner somewhere: he could hardly
decide upon the place; but a quiet banquet, at which the human heart
would expand in good fellowship, and where the wine was far above a
doubt.
Shopping and a dinner! Thus was the common purse to bleed in secret,
and at both ends.
Mr. Jericho drest himself with unusual care. He was a man not without
his whimsies; and believed that a good dinner was eaten with better
enjoyment, when taken in full dress. “I hold it impossible”—he would
say—“quite impossible, for a man to really relish turtle in gown and
slippers. No; when turtle was created, it was intended to be eaten
in state; eaten by men in robes and golden chains, to a flourish or
so of silver trumpets.” Mrs. Jericho was fully aware of this marital
superstition. Thus, when with an eye—a wife’s eye—at the bed-room
door, she saw her husband slide down stairs as though the bannister
was buttered, she knew from his dress that it was a day out; and when
the disturbed air wafted back the scent of lavender from the linen of
her lord, mingled with _huile des roses_ from his locks,—it will not
surprise the student of human nature, when we aver that the heart of
the married woman almost sank within her.
Speedily recovering herself, Mrs. Jericho determined upon her best
and brightest gown; her richest shawl; her most captivating bonnet.
These things endued, she took her purse, and as the bank-paper
crumpled in her resolute palm, catching a departing look at the
glass, it was plain to herself that she smiled mischief.
Mrs. Jericho had the profoundest opinion of the powers of her
husband: she believed him capable of any amount of money.
Nevertheless, the man would reject the flattery sometimes with
argument, sometimes with indignation. Again and again the husband
assured his wife, he must—and no help for it—die a beggar; but the
woman armed her heart with incredulity—she laughed, and would not
believe it. Indeed, it seemed her one purpose to show and to preach
an inextinguishable belief in the pocket of her husband. Everywhere,
she made converts. Tradesmen bowed down to her and believed her. On
all sides, dealers—cautious, knowing men, made circumspect by wives
and children—humbled themselves at the door of her pony phaeton,
taking orders. Mrs. Jericho did so possess them with a faith in
Jericho, that had she required the doorway to be laid with velvet
or cachemire, there would have been no scruple of hesitation in the
dealer; the foot-cloth would have been surely opened out, and put
down. Moreover, Mrs. Jericho was aided by her two daughters whom, on
her second marriage, she had handsomely presented to Mr. Jericho;
further enhancing the gift with a son; a young gentleman declared by
the partiality of friends to be born for billiards.
Mr. Jericho was forty when he married; therefore that, in one day, he
should find himself the father of three children, was taking the best
means to make up for the negligence of former years.
Mrs. Captain Pennibacker was made a widow at two-and-twenty by an
East Indian bullet; but it was not until she had laboured for eight
years to become calm about Pennibacker, that she fluttered towards
Jericho. And thus, at one blow, she made him her second husband, and
the second father of Pennibacker’s son and daughters. Offering such
treasures to Mr. Solomon Jericho, she naturally thought he could not
make too much of them. And for a season, Mr. Jericho showed a proper
sense of his good fortune; yet, though his wife would never fail to
assure him that he possessed a priceless treasure in herself and
children, as time wore on, the ungrateful man would now and then look
doubtfully at the family jewels.
Somehow, the Pennibackers failed to see in Mr. Jericho a flesh and
blood father-in-law. From their earliest introduction to him, they
considered him as they would consider a rich plum cake; to be sliced,
openly or by stealth, among them. As they grew up, Mr. Jericho merely
held in their opinion the situation of the person who paid the bills.
It was, we say, the household superstition that Jericho had an
unknown amount of wealth. Hence, he met with little thanks for what
he gave; for the recurring thought would still condemn him for what
he kept back. He possessed a sea of money; and yet he was mean enough
to filter his gold by drops. In a word, he never gave anything that
he, the donor, did not appear to the son or daughter receiving, the
paltriest of human creatures.
And let the truth be said. Mr. Jericho was persecuted by the natural
growth of his own falsehood. If at home he sat upon thorns, from his
own tongue had dropt the seed that produced the punishment. In early
times he had sown broadcast, notions of his abounding wealth; and the
pleasant lies, as lies will do, had come up prickles. They grew thick
in his daily path. Scarcely could he set foot forth without treading
upon them.
The widow Pennibacker, it will at once be understood, had married
Jericho wholly and solely for the sake of her children. It was, at
the cost of any personal sacrifice, a duty she owed her infants to
provide them with a wealthy father. She, herself—and we seek, we
ask no other testimony than her own declaration—she would have been
only too happy to join the dear deceased. But she had a duty to
fulfil—a stern duty that held her to the earth. And she shrank not
from its performance. No; suppressing her higher feelings, she gave
her hand to Solomon Jericho, and chastised herself to think with
calmness upon Pennibacker in his Indian tomb. She offered up—it was
her frequent expression to all her bosom friends—she offered up the
feelings of the widow to the duties of the mother. For what a man
was Pennibacker! Especially in his grave. But such indulgent thought
softens even asperity towards the departed. A natural and wholesome
tenderness. The grave is the true purifier, and in the charity of the
living, takes away the blots and stains from the dead.
When widow Pennibacker was first introduced to Mr. Jericho, he was
whisperingly, confidentially, recommended to her indulgent notice
as—a City Gentleman. Hence, Jericho appeared to the imagination
of the widow, with an indescribable glory of money about him. She
was a woman of naturally a lively fancy; a quality haply cultivated
by her sojourn in the East, where rajahs framed in gold and jewels
upon elephants were common pictures: hence, Jericho of the City of
London was instantaneously rendered by the widow a man of prodigious
wealth. She gave the freest, the most imaginative translation of
the words—City Gentleman. Though not handsome, he was instantly
considered to be most precious. Had she looked upon the Idol Ape,
Tinum Bug, whose every feature is an imperial jewel set in the
thickest skull of gold, and then cast a glance at Jericho, she would,
we fully believe it, have chosen the City Gentleman in preference
to the idol; so far, in the dizzied judgment of an impulsive,
imaginative woman, did Solomon Jericho outshine Tinum Bug.
And much, it must be granted, is to be allowed to Mrs. Pennibacker
as a woman and a mother. A City Gentleman! What a vision; what
exhalations rise from the ink that, like magic drops fallen from
Circe’s finger tips, create the radiant animal upon the white sheet
before us! What a picture to the imagination, the—City Gentleman!
Calm, plain, self-assured in the might of his wealth. All the bullion
of the Bank of England makes back-ground details; the India-house
dawns in the distance; and a hundred pennants from masts in India
Docks tremble in the far-off sky.
Great odds these, against the simplicity of woman! The Bank, the
India-house, and a hundred ships! Mrs. Pennibacker had huge strength
of character; but she succumbed to the unknown power of visionary
wealth; to the mysterious attributes of the City Gentleman. No man
could less look the part, yet Jericho bowed to the widow, a perfect
enchanter.
Again, Jericho was charmed, elevated by the graciousness of the
lady. Like an overlooked strawberry, he had remained until in his
own modesty he began to think himself hardly worth the gathering.
Therefore, when Mrs. Pennibacker vouchsafed to stoop to him, he was
astonished at her condescension, and melted by his own gratitude.
For Mrs. Pennibacker was a majestic woman. She had brought back
nothing of the softness of the East. She was not—she never had
been—an oriental toy for the grown child, man. It would have been
hard to couple her with thoughts of love-birds, and antelopes
and gazelles. No; she rather took her place with those legendary
Indian queens who hide their softness under golden bucklers; whose
bows are strung with tiger-gut; and whose feminine arrows, if
parrot-feathered, are fanged with mortal steel. In the picture of an
ancient panther-hunt, you would have looked to see such a figure as
the figure of Mrs. Pennibacker, thrusting a spear with a dread smile
of self-approbation in the bowels of the objecting pard.
And then, Jericho himself had in this case imagination too: indeed,
everybody has, when money is the thought, the theme. The common brain
will bubble to a golden wand.
It was whispered, sharply whispered to Jericho, that the widow had
many relations, many hopes in India. Immediately, Jericho flung about
the lady all the treasures of the East. Immediately she stood in a
shower-bath of diamonds; elephants’ teeth lay heaped about her; and
rice and cotton grounds, and fields of opium, many thousands of acres
of the prodigal east, stretched out on all sides of her, and on all
sides called her mistress. Yet for all this, Solomon Jericho was
ordinarily a dull, matter-of-fact man. Talk to him of Jacob’s ladder,
and he would ask the number of the steps.
All his life had Jericho trod upon firm earth; but widow Pennibacker
whipped him off his leaden feet, and carried him away into the fairy
ground of Mammon; and there his eyes twinkled at imaginary wealth,
and his ears burned and stood erect at the sound of shaken shadowy
money-bags.
And so, each trusting to each, Solomon Jericho and Sabilla
Pennibacker wooed and won each other; and the winning over, each had
to count the gains. It was very strange. Jericho himself could not
bear to think of the folly, the crime of the omission. Such neglect
had never before betrayed him. Why had he not assured himself of
the woman’s property, ere he made the woman his own? And then, for
his cold comfort, he would remember that he had, on two or three
occasions touched a little gravely upon the subject, whereupon Mrs.
Pennibacker so opened her large, black, mysterious orbs, that his
soul, like a mouse when startled by Grimalkin’s eyes—ran back into
its hole. Again and again—it was a wretched satisfaction for the
married man to think it—the question had been upon his tongue; when
some smile of haughty loveliness would curve the widow’s lips and—how
well he recollected the emotion—he felt himself the meanest wretch to
doubt her.
Mrs. Pennibacker had, on her part, just played about the property of
Jericho; but, with the trustingness of her sex, she was more than
satisfied when Jericho, with all the simplicity of real worth, spoke
calmly, yet withal hopefully, of the vast increase of profit arising
from his platina mines. The word “platina” sent Mrs. Pennibacker to
her Encyclopædia, which, however, comforted her exceedingly. She had
instinctively known it all along; but she now felt assured,—Solomon
Jericho, the holder of mines, possessed wealth inexhaustible. Being a
City Gentleman, of course he sold his platina on the Stock Exchange.
The wedding was very gorgeous. Very rarely are two people joined
together with so much expense. Nevertheless the contribution of
either party—had the other known it—would have somewhat shaken Hymen;
if, indeed, it had not wholly frightened him out of the church.
Mrs. Pennibacker, when introduced to Jericho, was so deep in debt,
that often, let folks try as they would, they could not see her.
And Jericho—doubtless from a short supply of platina—was an object
of extreme solicitude to a large number of dealers. When, however,
it was understood that the widow was to be married to a rich man in
the City, the lady found the very handsomest outfit for herself and
children made delightfully easy. And Jericho, bearing in mind the
heavy expense of an intoxicating honeymoon, readily obtained the
means, when _his_ circle—and every man has a circle, though of the
smallest—rang with the news that he was in imminent likelihood of
marrying the widow of an Indian Nabob!
And so bridegroom and bride—with a mutual trust even beyond mutual
expectation—walked to the altar, there to be welded into one. They
were married at St. George’s Church,—married in the bosom of a few
surrounding friends. The bride’s children were present, and cast a
mixed interest of pensiveness and pleasure on the ceremony. The bride
had told her bridesmaids that, “It would cost her a struggle, but
the dear children should be present; it was right they should. They
ought to have the sacrifice impressed upon their minds in the most
solemn way; the sacrifice that their poor mother consented to make
for them. Nobody but herself knew what a struggle it was; but, it was
her duty, and though her heart was with dear Pennibacker,—yes, she
would go through with it. Mr. Jericho had given the dear girls the
most beautiful lace frocks; and to Basil a lovely gold hunting-watch;
therefore, they ought and they should, witness the sacrifice.”
And Miss Pennibacker and Miss Agatha Pennibacker, like little
fairies, clothed in muslin and lace from elfin-looms, saw the
sacrifice with a vivacity of heart that almost spirted out at the
corners of their lips; and Basil Pennibacker, a gaunt, reedy boy
of twelve, did nothing during the ceremony but take out his new
gold hunting-watch—open it—snap it to—and return it again, as
though he had already had a glimpse of the preparations for the
wedding-breakfast, and with his thoughts upon all the delicacies of
the season, was impatient for the sacrifice to be completed.
And the last “Amen”—the last blow on the rivet—was struck, and
Solomon Jericho and Sabilla Pennibacker were man and wife. Whereupon,
in a hysteric moment, the bride turning to her children, took the
three in one living bunch in her arms, and sweeping them over to
Jericho, said—“You are their father now.”
Turning to the church books of St. George’s we find that the date of
this interesting deed of gift makes it about eight years to the date
of the particular emphatic question with which Mrs. Jericho, as with
a flourish of a silver trumpet, opened this little history.