improvement; it is essential to prosperity. Burns has signified that he
could not stoop to crawl into what he considered as the narrow holes of
bargain-making; and nine out of every ten persons who consider
themselves high-minded profess to sympathise with him, and say he was
right. But our immortal bard, in so saying, looked only at the odds and
ends--the corners and the disjointed extremities--of bargain-making,
properly so called; and he suffered his pride and his prejudices to
blind, in this instance, his mighty spirit, and contract his grasp, so
that he saw not the all-powerful, the humanising, and civilising
influence of the very bargain-making which he despised. True it is, that
as a spirit of speculation or bargain-making contracts itself, and every
day becomes more and more a thing of farthings and of fractions, it
begets a grovelling spirit of meanness, that may eventually end in
dishonesty; but as it expands, it exalts the man, imbues his mind with
liberality, and benefits society. The spirit of commercial speculation
will spread abroad, until it render useless the sword of the hero, cause
it to rust in its scabbard, and to be regarded as the barbarous
plaything of antiquity. It will go forth as a dove from the ark of
society, bearing the olive-branch of peace and of mutual benefits unto
all lands, until men shall learn war no more.
But at present I am not writing an essay on speculation or enterprise,
but the history of Reuben Purves, the Speculator; and I shall therefore
begin with it at once. Reuben was born in Galashiels, than which I do
not know a more thriving town, or one more beautifully situated, on all
the wide Borders. As you pass it, seated on the outside of the
Chevy-Chase coach on a summer day (if perchance a sunny shower shall
have fallen), it lies before you as a long and silvered line, the blue
slates reflecting back the sunbeams. In its streets, cleanliness and
prosperity join hands; while before it and behind it rise hills high
enough to be called mountains, where the gorgeous heather purples in its
season. Before it--I might say through it--wimples the Gala, almost
laving its thresholds. There the spirit of speculation and of trade has
taken up "a local habitation and a name," in the bosom of poetry. On the
one hand is the magic of Abbotsford, on the other the memories of
Melrose. But its description is best summed up in the condemnation of a
Cockney traveller, who said, "Vy, certainly, Galashiels would be wery
pretty, were it not its vood and vater!"
But I again digress from the history of Reuben Purves. I have said that
he was born in Galashiels: his father was a weaver, and the father
brought his son up to his own profession. But although Reuben
"Was a wabster guid,
Could stown a clue wi' onybody,"
his apprenticeship (if his instructions from his father could be called
one) was scarce expired, when, like Othello, he found "his occupation
gone," and the hand-loom was falling into disuse. Arkwright, who was
long considered a mere bee-headed barber, had--though in a great measure
by the aid of others--brought his mechanism to a degree of perfection
that not only astonished the world, but held out a more inexhaustible
and a richer source of wealth to Britain than its mines did to Peru.
Deep and bitter were the imprecations of many against the power-loom;
for it is difficult for any man to see good in that which dashes away
his hard-earned morsel from the mouths of his family, and leaves them
calling in vain for food. But there were a few spirits who could
appreciate the vast discovery, and who in it perceived not only the
benefits it would confer on the country, but on the human race.
Arkwright, who, though a wonderful man, was not one of deep or accurate
knowledge, with a vanity which in him is excusable, imagined that he
could carry out the results of his improvements to an extent that would
enable the country to pay off the national debt. It was a wild idea;
but, extravagant as it was, it must be acknowledged that the fruits of
his discoveries enabled Britain to bear up against its burdens, and
maintain its faith, in times of severest trial and oppression.
Reuben's father was one of those who complained most bitterly against
the modern innovation. He said, "the work could never be like a man's
work. It was a ridiculous novelty, and would justly end in the ruin of
all engaged in it." It had, indeed, not only reduced his wages the
one-half, but he had not half his wonted employment, and he saw nothing
but folly, ruin, and injustice in the speculation. Reuben, however,
pondered more deeply; he entered somewhat into the spirit of the
projector. He not only entertained the belief that it would enrich the
nation, but he cherished the hope that it would enrich himself. How it
was to accomplish his own advancement he did not exactly perceive, but
he lived in the idea--he dreamed of it--nothing could make him divest
himself of it; and he was encouraged by his mother saying--
"Weel, Reuben, I canna tell, things may be as ye say--only there is very
little appearance o' them at present, when the wages o' you and your
faither put thegither are hardly the half o' what ane o' ye could hae
made. But ae thing is certain--_they who bode for a silk gown always get
a sleeve o't_."
"Nonsense, woman! ye're as bad as him," was the reply of his father;
"wherefore would ye encourage the callant in his havers? I wonder,
seeing the distress we are a' brought to, he doesna think shame to speak
o' such a thing. Mak a fortune by the newfangled system, indeed!--my
truly! if it continue meikle langer, he winna be able to get brose
without butter."
"Weel, faither," was the answer of Reuben, "we'll see; but you must
perceive that there is no great improvement can take place, let it be
what it will, without doing injury to somebody. And it is our duty to
watch every opportunity to make the most of it."
"In my belief, the laddie is out o' his head," rejoined the father; "but
want will bring him to his senses."
Reuben, however, soon found that it became almost impossible to keep
soul and body together by the labours of the loom. He therefore began to
speculate on what he ought to do; and, like my honoured namesake, the
respectable poet, but immortal ornithologist, he took unto himself a
PACK, and, with it upon his shoulders, he resolved to perambulate the
Borders. There was no disgrace in the calling, for it is as ancient,
perhaps more ancient, than nobility; and we are told that, even in the
time of Solomon, "there were chapmen in the land in those days."
Therefore Reuben Purves became a chapman. He, as his original trade
might lead one to suppose, was purely a dealer in "_soft_" goods; and
when he entered a farmhouse, among the bonny buxom girls, he would have
flung his pack upon the table, and said--
"Here, now, my braw lassies; look ye here! Here's the real upright,
downright, elegant, and irresistible muslin for frills, which no
sweetheart upon this earth could have the power to withstand. And here's
the gown-pieces--cheap, cheap--actually giein them awa--the newest, the
most elegant patterns! Only look at them!--it is a sin to see them so
cheap! Naething could be mair handsome! Now or never, lassies. Look at
the ribands, too--blue, red, yellow, purple, green, plain, flowered, and
gauze. Now is the time for buskin your cockernony--naething could
withstand them wi' sic faces as yours--naething, naething, and that ye
would find. It would be out o' the question to talk o't. Come, hinnies,
only observe them, I'm sure ye canna but buy--or look at this lawn."
"O Reuben, man," they would have said, "they are very bonny; but we hae
nae siller."
"Havers!" answered he; "young queans like you talking about siller! Sell
your hair, dears, and buy lang lawn?"
Then did Reuben pull forth his scissors, and begin to exercise the
functions of a hairdresser, in addition to his calling as a
chapman--thinning, and sometimes almost cropping, the fair, the raven,
the auburn, or the brown tresses of the serving-maids, and giving them
his ribands and his cambrics in exchange for their shorn locks. The
ringlets he disposed of to the hairdressers in Edinburgh, Newcastle, or
Carlisle, and he confessed that he found it a very profitable
speculation; and where the colour or texture of the hair was beautiful,
he invariably preferred bartering for it, to receiving payment in money.
This was a trait in Reuben's character, at the outset of his career as a
speculator, which showed that he had a correct appreciation of the real
principles of trade--that he knew the importance of barter, without
which commerce could not exist; and it afforded an indication of the
future merchant.
He was in the habit of visiting every town, village, and farm-stead
within sixty miles of the Borders--to the north and to the south--and
taking in the entire breadth of the island. His visits became as regular
as clock-work. No merchant now-a-days knows more exactly the day and
almost the hour when he may expect a visit from the traveller of the
house with which he deals, accompanied with an invitation to drink a
bottle of wine, and pay his account, than the people in the Border
villages knew when Reuben would appear amongst them.
It was shrewdly suspected that Reuben did not confine himself solely to
the sale of ribands, gown-pieces, and such-like ware, but that his
goodly pack was in fact a magazine, in which was concealed tea, cognac,
and tobacco. At all events, he prospered amazingly, and in the course of
three years--though he lessened its weight at every village he came
to--his pack overgrew his shoulders, and prosperity compelled him,
first, to have recourse to a pack-horse, and, before he had had it long,
to a covered cart or caravan. In short, on arriving at a village,
instead of going round from house to house, with his stock upon his
shoulders, as he was wont to do, he sent round the drummer or bellman:
or, where no such functionaries are known, he employed some other
individual, with a key and a trencher, to go round the village and make
the proclamation--
"This is to give notice, that Mr Reuben Purves, with his grand and
elegant assortment of the newest and most fashionable varieties of
soft-ware goods, _and other commodities_, all bought by him for ready
money, so that great bargains may be expected, has just arrived (at such
an inn), and will remain for this day only; therefore those who wish the
real superior articles, at most excellent bargains, will embrace the
present opportunity."
Let not the reader despise Reuben because he practised and understood
the mysteries of puffing. There is nothing done in this world without
it. No gardener ever "lichtlied" his own leeks. All men practise it,
from the maker of books to the maker of shoe-blacking, or the vender of
matches. From the grandiloquent advertisement of a metropolitan
auctioneer, down to the "_only_ true and particular account" of an
execution, bawled by a flying-stationer on the streets, the spirit of
puffing, in its various degrees, is to be found. Therefore we blame not
Reuben; he only did what other people did, though perhaps after a
different fashion, and with better success. It gave a promise of his
success as a tradesman. He said he ventured on it as a speculation, and
finding it to suit his purpose, he continued it. In truth, scarce had
the herald made the proclamation which I have quoted, until Reuben's
cart was literally besieged. His customers said, "it went like a cried
fair--there was nae getting forward to it."
Moreover, he was always civil; he was always obliging. He had a smile
and a pleasant and merry word for every one. Buy or not buy, his
courtesy never failed him. In short, he would do anything to oblige his
customers, save to give them credit; and that, as he said, was not
because he had any doubt of their honesty, or that he was unwilling to
serve them, but because he had laid it down as a rule never to trust a
single penny, which rule he could not break. He was also possessed of a
goodly person; was some five feet ten inches in height; he had fair
hair, a ruddy, cheerful countenance, intelligent blue eyes; and his
years but little exceeded thirty.
At this period of Reuben's history, there lived in the town of Moffat
one Miss Priscilla Spottiswoode. Now, Priscilla was a portly, and withal
a comely, personage, and though rather stout, she was tall in proportion
to her stoutness. Nothing could surpass the smoothness of the clear red
and white upon her goodly countenance. There was by no means too much
red, and constitutional good-nature shed a sort of perpetual smile over
her features, like a sunbeam irradiating a tranquil lake. In short, it
was a reproach to every bachelor in the town and parish of Moffat, to
have permitted forty-and-four summers to roll over the head of
Priscilla, without one amongst them having the manliness to step forward
and offer his hand to rescue her from a state of single solitariness.
She had been for more than twenty years the maid, or rather I might say
the nurse, of an old and rich lady, who at her death bequeathed to her
five hundred pounds.
Reuben first saw Priscilla about three months after she had received
the legacy. "Five hundred pounds," thought he, "would set a man on his
feet." He also gazed on her kind, comely, smiling countenance, and he
said within himself that "the men of Moffat were blind." And eventually
he concluded, communing with himself, that the fair Priscilla was a
speculation worthy the thinking of. She wished to purchase a few yards
of lace for cap-borders, and such-like purposes; and as Reuben sold them
to her, he said to her a hundred pleasant things, and he let drop some
well-timed and well-turned compliments, and she blushed as his eulogy on
the lace aptly ended in praise of her own fair features. Yet this was
not all; for he not only sold to her fifty per cent. cheaper than he
would have parted with his goods to any other purchaser, but he
politely--by what appeared a wilful sort of accident--contrived to give
her a full yard into her bargain. Priscilla looked upon Reuben with more
than complacency; she acknowledged (that is, to herself) that he was the
best-looking, polite, and most sensible young man she had ever seen. She
resolved that in future she would deal with no one else; and, indeed,
she had got such an excellent bargain of the lace, that she had come to
the determination of again visiting his stock, and making a purchase of
other articles. And, added she, to a particular friend, "It does a body
good to buy from him, for he is always so pleasant."
But Reuben saved her the trouble; for early the next day he called at
her house, with a silk dress under his arm. He said--
"It was the last piece of the kind he had--indeed it was a perfect
beauty, equal to real India, and would become her exceedingly--and not
to think about the price, for that was no object."
"What, then, am I to think about?" thought Priscilla; and she admired
the silk much, but, peradventure, if the truth were told, she admired
its owner more.
Reuben spent more than two hours beneath the roof of the
too-long-neglected spinster. Often in those two hours she blushed, his
tongue faltered, and when he rose to depart, he had neither the silk
beneath his arm, nor the cash for it in his pocket; but he shook her
hand long and fervently, and he would have saluted her fair cheek--but
true love, like true genius, people say, is always modest. Priscilla, on
being left alone, felt her heart in a very unusual tumult; and now she
examined her face in a mirror, and again admired the silk which he had
presented to her. She had always heard him spoken of as a steady,
thriving, and deserving young man; and it became a settled point in her
mind, that, if he directly popped the important question, she would be
as candid with him, and at once answer, "_Yes_."
Reuben was frequently seen in Moffat after this, even when he brought no
goods for sale; and within six months after her purchase of the lace,
the sacred knot, which no man may unloose, was tied between them; and at
the age of forty-and-four years and four months, but before time had
"wrote a wrinkle" on her fair brow, Miss Priscilla Spottiswoode blushed
into Mrs Purves.
While following his avocation as a chapman, Reuben had accumulated
somewhat more than two hundred pounds, which, with the five hundred that
his wife brought him, raised his capital to more than seven hundred. But
he was not a man to look only at the needle point of things, or whose
soul would be lost in a nut-shell. Onward! onward! was the ruling
principle of Reuben--he had been fortunate in all his speculations, and
he trusted to be fortunate still. Never, during all his wanderings, had
he lost sight of the important discoveries of Arkwright, and of the
improvements which were every day being made upon them; and, while he
was convinced that they would become a source of inexhaustible wealth to
the nation, he still cherished the hope and the belief that they would
enrich himself. He said also--and Mrs Purves agreed with him--that
travelling the country was a most uncomfortable life for a married man.
He therefore sold his horse and his covered cart, disposed of his stock
at prime cost, and, with his wife and capital, removed to Manchester.
He took a room and a cellar at the top of Dean Street, and near to the
foot of Market Street,
"Where merchants most do congregate."
The upper room served them for bedchamber, parlour, kitchen, and all,
while the cellar he converted into a wareroom. Perhaps, having more than
seven hundred pounds to begin the world with, some may think that he
might have taken more commodious premises; but rents were becoming high
in Manchester--many a great merchant has begun business in a cellar--and
Reuben, quoting the words of poor Richard, said:--
"Vessels large may venture more,
But little boats should keep near shore."
And he further said, "I am but serving my time yet; we must creep before
we walk."
Never was any man who prospered in the affairs of this world more
diligent in business than Reuben Purves, and in Priscilla he found an
admirable helpmate. She soon learned the name, the price, and the
quality of every description of goods; and when he was necessarily
absent, she could attend to the orders of customers as promptly as
himself. The reader unacquainted with the Manchester mode of business,
is not to suppose that Reuben, although his stock was wedged up in a
cellar, was a retail draper or haberdasher. Its magnitude considered,
there are fewer such in Manchester than in any other town in the
kingdom; but Reuben commenced as a wholesale merchant--one who supplies
the country dealers. He always went to the markets to purchase with the
money in his hand, as Joseph the patriarch's brethren came to him to
buy corn--and pity it is that the good old custom has too much fallen
into disuse. He made his purchases chiefly from the small manufacturers,
to whom ready money was an object of importance, and consequently bought
his goods to much advantage to himself. During his extensive
perambulations on the Borders, also, he had become generally acquainted
with the drapers in all the towns upon his circuit; and at the seasons
when they generally visit Manchester, he might have been seen rapidly
passing along what is now called Piccadilly, and passing the coach from
the north, just as it drew up to the inn; and if one whose face he knew
stepped off it or out of it, Reuben turned suddenly round as if by
accident, took the north-country purchaser by the hand, and invited him
home to "eat beef" with him, or to take supper, as the case might be. He
was generally successful; for to resist his solicitations was a matter
of difficulty, and after partaking of a frugal meal and a single glass,
the stranger was invited to examine the stock in the wareroom, and
seldom failed of becoming the purchaser of a part. By such means, and
perseverance, his business in a few years increased exceedingly. He was
of opinion that there is hardly anything too difficult for resolute
perseverance to accomplish or overcome, at least he always found it so;
and I confess I am very much of his mind.
Within three years he had taken extensive warerooms. He had a clerk, a
salesman, four warehousemen, a traveller, and a porter. He had also
taken his father from the loom. Reuben had seized fortune at the flood,
and he floated down with the stream. He said he never undertook a
speculation, but he was convinced in his own mind it would be
successful. He also said, that fortune-making was like courtship; it was
never venture never win--only to know what you were venturing upon.
I should have mentioned, that, previous to this, Priscilla had made
Reuben the happy father of twin daughters, and the one they named
Rachel, the other Elizabeth. The mother gloried in her children, and her
husband looked on them with delight. He was a fortunate man and a happy
one; and his cup of felicity, if it did not run over, was well filled.
In a short time, Reuben not only supplied with goods to a great extent
the merchants on the Borders, but throughout the three kingdoms; and he
also exported extensively to other countries, and even to some where the
importation of British goods was prohibited.
"A fig for their tariffs," he was wont to say, snapping his fingers;
"the profit will cover the risk. The principle of trade is like the
principle of steam--there is no restraining it. Neither kings, emperors,
congresses, nor laws, are a match for it. They canna cage it up like a
bird. They might as well say to the waves of the sea, 'hitherto shalt
thou come and no farther,' as to the spirit of trade--'_stop_!'"
In these speculations however, Reuben frequently experienced the common
fate of the smuggler; and the goods which he sent into countries where
they were prohibited were seized. He was of too ardent a temperament to
be merely the purchaser and vender of other men's manufactures, and
eventually he erected a cotton-mill of his own, a few miles out of
Manchester.
And here it will, perhaps, be more acceptable to the reader, that I
detail the remainder of Reuben's narrative in his own words, as he
related it to an old schoolfellow in his native town, after an absence
from it of more than thirty years. It was delivered with his unchanged
Scottish accent, and with many Scottish phrases and modes of expression,
which a residence of more than three times ten years in England had not
destroyed:--
I was now (said he, alluding to the erection of the mill), at what I
had always considered as the very pinnacle of my ambition--the
proprietor of a cotton-mill, and of one, too, that had cost me several
thousands in completing it. I had no manner of doubt, but that it would
turn out the master-speculation of my existence; for, bless ye, at that
period, to have a mill was to have a mine. A spinning-jenny was worth
its weight in rubies. There was Arkwright, made a fortune like a
nobleman's in a jiffy; and Robert Peel, greatly to his credit from being
a weaver lad, I may say, in less than no time, made a fortune that could
have bought up half the gentry in the country. Indeed, wealth just
poured in upon the millowners; and, I must confess, they werna bad times
for the like o' me, that bought their calicoes, and got them dressed and
printed to sell them out, as you may judge from my having been able to
erect a mill of my own before I had been many years in business. But, I
must confess, that the mill ran between me and my wits. All the time it
was building, I was out and in frae the town to see how the workmen were
getting on, wet or dry; and, I dare to say, that if I dreamed about it
once during the twelve months it was in hands, I dreamed about it a
thousand times. Many a time Priscilla has said to me--
"Reuben, I doubt ye are thinking owre meikle about that mill, and really
it's no richt--it is sinfu. I fear it is aneugh to mak the concern no
prosper."
"My dear," I used to say, "do ye consider what an immense speculation it
is?--it is like death or life to me; and, if I dinna think o't, and look
after the workmen to see how they are gettin on wi' it, who, do ye
suppose, would? There is naething like a man lookin after his own
concerns; and, where there is sae meikle at stake, it is impossible but
to think o't."