"All that messuage dwelling-house and premises now standing on part of
the said parcel of ground" was the phrase in the assignment of lease,
although it only meant Number Twenty-seven Mulberry Street, Old Ford,
containing five rooms and a wash-house, and sharing a dirty front wall
with the rest of the street on the same side. The phrase was a very fine
one, and, with others more intricate, lent not a little to the triumph
and the perplexity the transaction filled old Jack Randall withal. The
business was a conjunction of purchase and mortgage, whereby old Jack
Randall, having thirty pounds of his own, had, after half-an-hour of
helpless stupefaction in a solicitor's office in Cornhill, bought a
house for two hundred and twenty pounds, and paid ten pounds for stamps
and lawyer's fees. The remaining two hundred pounds had been furnished
by the Indubitable Perpetual Building Society, on the security of a
mortgage; and the loan, with its interest, was to be repaid in monthly
instalments of two pounds and fourpence during twelve years. Thus old
Jack Randall designed to provide for the wants and infirmities of age;
and the outright purchase, he argued, was a thing of mighty easy
accomplishment. For the house let at nine shillings a week, which was
twenty-three pounds eight shillings a year; and the mortgage
instalments, with the ground rent of three pounds a year, only came to
twenty-seven pounds four, leaving a difference of three pounds sixteen,
which would be more than covered by a saving of eighteenpence a week:
certainly not a difficult saving for a man with a regular job and no
young family, who had put by thirty pounds in little more than three
years. Thus on many evenings old Jack Randall and his wife would figure
out the thing, wholly forgetting rates and taxes and repairs.
Old Jack stood on the pavement of Cornhill, and stared at the traffic.
When he remembered that Mrs. Randall was by his side, he said, "Well,
mother, we done it;" and his wife replied, "Yus, fa', you're a lan'lord
now." Hereat he chuckled and began to walk eastward. For to be a
landlord is the ultimate dignity. There is no trouble, no anxiety in the
world if you are a landlord; and there is no work. You just walk round
on Monday mornings (or maybe you even drive in a trap), and you collect
your rents: eight and six, or nine shillings, or ten shillings, as the
case may be. And there you are! It is better than shopkeeping, because
the money comes by itself; and it is infinitely more genteel. Also, it
is better than having money in a bank and drawing interest; because the
house cannot run away as is the manner of directors, nor dissolve into
nothingness as is the way of banks. And here was he, Jack Randall,
walking down Leadenhall Street a landlord. He mounted a tram-car at
Aldgate, and all things were real.