I
James Clinton was a clerk in the important firm of Haynes, Bryan & Co.,
and he held in it an important position. He was the very essence of
respectability, and he earned one hundred and fifty-six pounds per
annum. James Clinton believed in the Church of England and the
Conservative party, in the greatness of Great Britain, in the need of
more ships for the navy, and in the superiority of city men to other
members of the commonweal.
'It's the man of business that makes the world go round,' he was in the
habit of saying. 'D'you think, sir, that fifty thousand country squires
could rule Great Britain? No; it's the city man, the man who's 'ad a
sound business training, that's made England what it is. And that is why
I 'old the Conservative party most capable of governing this mighty
empire, because it 'as taken the business man to its 'eart. The
strength of the Conservative party lies in its brewers and its city
men, its bankers and iron-founders and stockbrokers; and as long as the
Liberal party is a nest of Socialists and Trades-Unionists and
Anarchists, we city men cannot and will not give it our support.'
Except for the lamentable conclusion of his career, he would undoubtedly
have become an Imperialist, and the Union of the Great Anglo-Saxon Races
would have found in him the sturdiest of supporters!
Mr Clinton was a little, spindly-shanked man, with weak, myopic eyes,
protruding fishlike behind his spectacles. His hair was scant, worn long
to conceal the baldness of the crown--and Caesar was pleased to wear a
wreath of laurel for the same purpose.... Mr Clinton wore small
side-whiskers, but was otherwise clean-shaven, and the lack of beard
betrayed the weakness of his mouth; his teeth were decayed and yellow.
He was always dressed in a black tail-coat, shiny at the elbows; and he
wore a shabby, narrow black tie, with a false diamond stud in his
dickey. His grey trousers were baggy at the knees and frayed at the
edges; his boots had a masculine and English breadth of toe. His top
hat, of antiquated shape, was kept carefully brushed, but always looked
as if it were suffering from a recent shower. When he had deserted the
frivolous byways in which bachelordom is wont to disport itself for the
sober path of the married man, he had begun to carry to and from the
city a small black bag to impress upon the world at large his eminent
respectability. Mr Clinton was married to Amy, second daughter of John
Rayner, Esquire, of Peckham Rye....