issued other than those contained in the newspapers; but from figures
before us relating to a period from 1849 to 1859, we find that over
one million seals were killed within that time by Scottish sealers
alone; and the success of individual crews in the killing of these
animals, it may be said, comes occasionally within the realms of the
marvellous. The oil obtained from the seals is as valuable as that got
from the arctic whales, whilst their skins are also of some commercial
importance. It was a happy circumstance that just as whale-fishing
began to fall off, gas as an illuminant became common; and although
train and sperm oils are still used in various manufactories, and
especially in jute-mills, the mineral oils which have been found in
such quantity have doubtless served many of the purposes for which
whale-oil was at one time in constant demand.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] The whale suckles her young, and is therefore a mammal, and not,
strictly speaking, a fish. It is, however, so called by all sailors.
MR PUDSTER’S RETURN.
IN TWO CHAPTERS.—CHAPTER I.
Mr Solomon Pudster and Mr Gideon Maggleby were bosom friends; nor
could they well be otherwise. They were both born on the 29th of May
1815, in Gower Street, Bloomsbury; Solomon entering upon the world’s
stage at an early hour in the morning at No. 69, and Gideon first
seeing the light about mid-day at No. 96. At the age of ten, the
boys were sent to Westminster School; at the age of seventeen, they
became fellow-clerks in the great West India warehouse of Ruggleton,
Matta, & Co.; and at the age of four-and-twenty they went into
partnership as sugar-merchants in Mincing Lane. At that period they
were bachelors; and being already sincerely attached one to the
other, they decided to live together in a pleasant little house in the
then fashionable neighbourhood of Fitzroy Square. For years they were
almost inseparable. Day after day they breakfasted and dined together
at home, and worked and lunched together in the City; and but for the
fact that the firm purchased a large sugar estate in Demerara, Solomon
Pudster and Gideon Maggleby would probably have never been parted for
more than a few hours at a time until death decreed a dissolution of
their partnership. The sugar estate, unfortunately, required a great
deal of looking after; and at regular intervals of two years, one of
the partners was obliged to cross the Atlantic and to remain absent
from his friend for five or six months. Solomon and Gideon alternately
undertook these troublesome expeditions, and braved the heat and
mosquitoes of the tropics; and meantime the firm of Pudster and
Maggleby prospered exceedingly; and no shadow of a cloud came between
the devoted friends—the former of whom, on account of his being a few
hours the older, was declared senior partner in the firm.
But in the year 1865 an important event happened. Mr Pudster and Mr
Maggleby ran down by train one evening to see the fireworks at the
Crystal Palace; and on their return journey they found themselves
in a compartment the only other occupant of which was a remarkably
buxom and cheery-looking widow of about forty years of age. The two
gentlemen, with their accustomed gallantry, entered into conversation
with her. They discovered that she and they had several friends in
common, and that she was, in fact, a certain Mrs Bunter, whose many
domestic virtues and abounding good-nature had often been spoken of in
their hearing. They were charmed with her; they begged, as if with one
accord, to be permitted to call upon her at her house in Chelsea; and
when, after putting her into a cab at Victoria Station, they started
off to walk home, they simultaneously exclaimed with enthusiasm: ‘What
a splendid woman!’
‘Ah, Gideon!’ ejaculated Mr Pudster sentimentally, a few moments later.
‘Ah, Solomon!’ responded Mr Maggleby with equal passion.
‘If only we had such an angel at home to welcome us!’ continued the
senior partner.
‘Just what I was thinking,’ assented Mr Maggleby, who thereupon looked
up at the moon and sighed profoundly.
‘No other woman ever affected us in this way, Gideon,’ said Mr Pudster;
‘and here we are at fifty’——
‘Fifty last May, Solomon.’
‘Well, we ought to know better!’ exclaimed Mr Pudster with honest
warmth.
‘So we ought, Solomon.’
‘But upon my word and honour, Gideon, Mrs Bunter’s a magnificent
specimen of her sex.’
‘She is, Solomon; and I don’t think we can conscientiously deny that
we are in love with her.’
‘We are,’ said Mr Pudster with much humility.
Having thus ingenuously confessed their passion, the two gentlemen
walked on in silence; and it was not until they were near home that
they again spoke.
‘I suppose that it will be necessary as a matter of formal business,’
suggested Mr Pudster diffidently, ‘for us to call upon Mrs Bunter and
apprise her of the state of our feelings. We mean, of course, to follow
the matter up?’
‘Certainly, certainly,’ agreed Mr Maggleby; ‘we mean to follow the
matter up.’
‘Perhaps the firm had better write to her and prepare her mind,’
proposed the senior partner, with kindly forethought.
‘The firm had better write to-morrow, Solomon; but, Solomon, it occurs
to me that the firm cannot marry Mrs Bunter. You or I must be the happy
man; and then, Solomon, we shall have to separate.’
‘Never!’ ejaculated Mr Pudster, who stopped and seized his friend by
the hand—‘never! You shall marry Mrs Bunter, and we will all live
together.’
‘Solomon, this magnanimity!’ murmured Mr Maggleby, who had tears in
his eyes. ‘No; I will not accept such a sacrifice. You, as the senior
partner, shall marry Mrs Bunter; and, with her permission, I will
stay with you. The firm shall write to prepare her mind. Business is
business. The firm shall write to-night; and I myself will take the
letter to the post.’
Half an hour later, Mr Maggleby handed to Mr Pudster a letter, of which
the following is a copy:
14 MINCING LANE, CITY,
_August 4, 1865._
_To_ MRS FERDINAND BUNTER,
_Matador Villa, Chelsea._
MADAM—Our Mr Pudster will do himself the honour of calling
upon you to-morrow between twelve and one, in order to lay
before you a project which is very intimately connected with
the comfort and well-being of the undersigned. We beg you,
therefore, to regard any proposition that may be made to you by
our Mr P., as made to you on behalf of the firm and with its
full authority.—We remain, madam, most devotedly yours,
PUDSTER and MAGGLEBY.
‘How will that do?’ asked Mr Maggleby with conscious pride.
‘Excellently well, Gideon,’ said Mr Pudster. ‘But don’t you think that
“most devotedly yours” sounds rather too distant? What do you say to
“yours admiringly,” or “yours to distraction?”’
‘“Yours to distraction” sounds best, I think,’ replied Mr Maggleby
after considerable reflection. ‘I will put that in, and re-copy the
letter, Solomon.’
‘We are about to take an important step in life,’ said Mr Pudster
seriously. ‘Are you sure, Gideon, that we are not acting too hastily?’
‘Mr Pudster!’ exclaimed Mr Maggleby warmly, ‘we may trust these sacred
promptings of our finer feelings. We have lived too long alone. The
firm needs the chaste and softening influence of woman. And who in this
wide world is more fitted to grace our board than Mrs Bunter?’
‘So be it, then,’ assented the senior partner.
Mr Maggleby re-copied the letter, signed it with the firm’s usual
signature, and carried it to the nearest letter-box. When he returned,
he found his friend waiting to go to bed, and trying to keep himself
awake by studying the marriage service.
On the following forenoon, Mr Pudster, with the scrupulous punctuality
that is characteristic of City men, called at Matador Villa, Chelsea,
and was at once shown into the presence of Mrs Bunter, who was waiting
to receive him. ‘I am quite at a loss to understand why you have done
me the honour of coming to see me to-day,’ said the widow. ‘From your
letter, I judge that you have some business proposal to make to me.
Unfortunately, Mr Pudster, I am not prepared to speculate in sugar. I
am not well off. But, perhaps, I am under a misapprehension. The letter
contains an expression which I do not understand.’
‘It is true,’ replied the senior partner, ‘that we _have_ some hope of
persuading you to speculate a little in sugar; and there is no reason
why your want of capital should prevent your joining us.’
‘I quite fail to grasp your meaning,’ said Mrs Bunter.
‘Well, I am not very good at explanations,’ said Mr Pudster; ‘but I
will explain the situation as well as I can. You see, Mrs Bunter, Mr
Maggleby my partner, and myself, are bachelors and live together. We
find it dull. We long for the civilising influences of woman’s society.
We are, in fact, tired of single-blessedness. The firm is at present
worth a clear five thousand a year. It will support a third partner, we
think; and so we propose, Mrs Bunter, that you should join it, and come
and take care of us in a friendly way.’
Mrs Bunter looked rather uncomfortable, and was silent for a few
moments. ‘You are very good,’ she said at last; ‘but although I am not
well off, I had not thought of going out as a housekeeper. The late Mr
Bunter left me enough for my little needs.’
‘I hope so indeed, madam. But we don’t ask you to come to us as a
housekeeper simply. Marriage is what we offer you, Mrs Bunter. In the
name of Pudster and Maggleby, I have the honour of proposing for your
hand.’
‘Mercy!’ exclaimed Mrs Bunter in some agitation. ‘Surely you would not
have me marry the firm?’
‘I put it in that way,’ said Mr Pudster, ‘because Maggleby and I are
practically one and the same. But I will be accurate. The proposition
is, Mrs Bunter, that you should become the wife of—ahem!—the senior
partner; and that Gideon Maggleby should live with us in his old
sociable way. Excuse my blunt way of expressing myself, Mrs Bunter.’
‘Then you, Mr Pudster, are the senior partner!’ said Mrs Bunter, with a
very agreeable smile. ‘I am very much flattered, I assure you; but your
proposal requires consideration.’
‘No doubt,’ assented Mr Pudster. ‘The firm is willing to wait for your
reply. In matters of business we are never in a hurry.—When may we look
for your answer?’
‘Well, you shall have a note by to-morrow morning’s post,’ replied Mrs
Bunter. ‘I may say,’ she added, ‘that I have heard a great deal of your
firm, Mr Pudster; and that I am conscious that it does me great honour
by thus offering me a partnership in it.’
‘Indeed, madam, the honour is ours!’ said Mr Pudster, bowing as he
retired.
No sooner had he departed than the widow burst into a long and merry
fit of laughter. Her first impulse was to write and refuse the
ridiculous offer; but as the day wore on, she thought better of the
affair; and in the evening, after dinner, she sat down quite seriously,
and wrote a letter as follows:
MATADOR VILLA, CHELSEA,
_August 5, 1865._
_To_ MESSRS PUDSTER and MAGGLEBY,
_14 Mincing Lane, City._
GENTLEMEN—I have decided to accept the very flattering offer
which was laid before me to-day on your behalf by your Mr
Pudster. If he will call, I shall have much pleasure in
arranging preliminaries with him.—I remain, gentlemen, very
faithfully yours,
MARIA BUNTER.
‘I must fall in with their humour, I suppose,’ she reflected. ‘And
really, Mr Pudster is a very nice man, and almost handsome; and I’m
sure that I shall do no harm by marrying him. Besides, it is quite true
that they must want some one to look after them. If they go on living
by themselves, they will grow crusty and bearish.’ And Mrs Bunter sent
her maid out to post the letter.
Three weeks later, the widow became Mrs Pudster; Mr Maggleby, of
course, officiating as best-man at the wedding, and being the first
to salute the bride in the vestry after the ceremony. Thenceforward,
for a whole year, the three members of the firm lived together in
complete harmony; and the pleasant history of their existence was
only interrupted by Mr Pudster’s enforced departure for Demerara in
September 1866. Mr Maggleby, it is true, offered to go instead of
him; but Mr Pudster would not hear of it; and Mr Maggleby was obliged
to confess that business was business, and that it was certainly
Mr Pudster’s turn to brave the mosquitoes. And so, after confiding
his wife to the care of his friend, Mr Pudster departed. During his
absence, all went well; and in March 1867 he returned to England. But
this time the heat had been too much for poor Mr Pudster. His wife
noticed that he was looking unwell. Maggleby, with sorrow, perceived
the same. Pudster laughed. Nevertheless, he soon took to his bed; and
after a long and painful illness, died.
The grief of Mrs Pudster and Mr Maggleby was terrible to witness.
Mrs Pudster talked of retiring from the world; and Gideon Maggleby
disconsolately declared that he had no longer anything left to live
for. No one, therefore, will be much surprised to hear that towards the
end of March 1868, Mr Gideon Maggleby led Mrs Solomon Pudster to the
altar.
‘Solomon will bless our union,’ Mr Maggleby had said, when he proposed.
‘Ah, dear sainted Solomon!’ Mrs Pudster had exclaimed as she fell
weeping upon Mr Maggleby’s breast.
SUDDEN RUIN.
In a former paper (April 19, 1884), instances were cited of fortunes
suddenly made, not by inheritance or industry, but by what people
are pleased to call luck. Cases of sudden ruin are less frequent,
for, generally speaking, the wreck of a man’s fortune is like that of
a ship: some rock is touched; water flows in; frantic attempts are
made to lighten the vessel or to steer it into port; and finally, the
foundering is slow. The striking upon a rock, however, is commonly with
fortunes, as with ships, a sudden accident. It may be the result of
careless or incapable steering; or it may be caused by a combination
of adverse tides and winds, which no human skill can stem, and which
hurry on the ship helplessly to destruction, inevitable, though it is
not always foreseen. The rock, in whatever way it may be reached, is
the determining cause of ruin; and when we speak of a man having been
suddenly ruined, we mean that the calamity which brought him to poverty
by degrees more or less rapid, occurred at a time and in a manner which
took himself and his friends by surprise.
We are happily exempt in this country from those overwhelming disasters
occasioned by political convulsions. Those who witnessed the flight of
French ladies and gentlemen from their country upon the downfall of the
Second Empire heard tales of misfortune not easily to be forgotten.
Senators and prefects who, in July 1870, were living in luxury and
power, drawing large salaries, and secure of the future, were towards
the middle of September huddling in lodging-houses of towns on the
English south coast; and along with them were bankers who had been
obliged to suspend payment, and manufacturers and landowners of the
eastern provinces who had fled from the tide of invasion, after seeing
their factories or fields burnt, ravaged, and overrun by the enemy.
In most of these cases, ruin had been sudden and irremediable, so much
so, as to appal sympathising British minds. And yet vicissitudes quite
as pitiable had been witnessed in London a few years before—that is,
on the Black Friday of May 1866, when, within a single day, hundreds
of fortunes were wrecked in the City. For the most part, the people
who were ruined on this awful Friday had had no warning of the fate
impending over them; and this must needs be so whenever banks or
financial companies fail. The credit of these establishments is like a
piece of glass, which must remain undamaged, or there is an end to its
value. For self-preservation, banks and companies feel bound to conceal
their difficulties till these are past mending; and thus it generally
happens that whenever a House suspends payment, almost all its
customers are utterly unprepared. What this means, we all know, if not
from personal experience, at least from misfortunes which have fallen
upon persons of our acquaintance. Our country neighbour who lived in
such grand style, returns from town one evening with a haggard face.
A few days later it is announced that his house is to let; there is
a sale; a notice among the bankruptcies in the _Gazette_; the family
quietly leave their home; and from that time, only intimate friends
know for certain what has become of them. Perhaps, years afterwards,
somebody who knew the neighbour in great wealth, finds him eking out
a penurious existence in the suburbs of some large city. Among the
hundreds of acres of cheap houses which form the outskirts of London,
the people ‘who have seen better days’ are an unnumbered multitude.
Every suburban clergyman and doctor knows some, and generally too many
of them; every bachelor in quest of furnished lodgings is pretty sure
to stumble upon several people in this plight. Auctioneers and brokers,
however, know them best of all, for it is they who play the chief part
in the closing act of the drama of Ruin, when the last waifs of former
wealth—the pieces of good old furniture, the pictures, china, books,
and other such long-treasured valuables, have to be sold off to buy
necessaries.
One of the most frequent and deplorable agents of sudden ruin is
the dishonest partner. No business can be managed without mutual
confidence between those who conduct it; and though, when we hear
that a commercial man has brought himself within reach of the law,
we are inclined to doubt if his partner can have been unaware of his
malpractices, yet it must be obvious that the dishonesty of one partner
too often arises from the unsuspicious simplicity of the other. There
are even instances in which no amount of sagacity will save a man from
the enterprises of a roguish partner. The following is a very common
case: A and B being partners, A dies, and his son succeeds to his share
of the business. So long as A was alive, the speculative tendencies of
B were kept in check; but young A has not the same experience as his
father; he has learned to respect B; he looks to him for guidance; and
if B has made up his mind to extend the business of the firm by new
methods, now that he is head-partner, the junior partner will generally
be a mere tool in his hands. If young A be more fond of pleasure than
business, he will of course be even less than a tool—a mere cipher; and
B will be left to manage matters as he pleases, until he succeeds in
his schemes, and proposes to buy A out of the business; or fails, and
brings A to poverty and disgrace. It is a cruel thing that if B has
absconded, A will have to bear the entire brunt of creditors’ wrath,
and perhaps be criminally punished for his innocence. But partners have
learned this lesson so often, that it is almost a wonder how any sane
man can assume responsibilities without ascertaining the nature and
extent of them. It is certainly not for the public interest that the
sudden ruin of an honest partner should be pleaded in extenuation for
his ignorance or carelessness.
Let us take some other causes of sudden ruin. We may set aside the
destruction of property by fire or flood, as offering examples too
many and obvious; nor does the sudden ruin of spendthrifts by cards
or betting call for notice. But the ruin which comes to a man through
sudden loss of character in his trade or profession is always most
lamentable, especially when the offence perpetrated was unintentional,
and did not appear to call for so heavy a punishment. The chemist
who asked to be discharged from serving on the jury in ‘Bardell _v._
Pickwick’ on the ground that his assistant would be selling arsenic to
the customers, expressed an alarm in which there was nothing jocular at
all. We know of a chemist whose assistant committed this very mistake
of supplying arsenic for some other drug, and three children were
poisoned in consequence. The chemist was totally ruined. A coroner’s
jury having brought in a verdict of manslaughter against him, he took
his trial at the assizes, and was acquitted. But doctors ceased to
recommend him; the public avoided his shop; his appointment as local
postmaster was taken from him, and in a short time he became bankrupt.
Poisoning by inadvertence has been the ruin of many a chemist, and of
not a few country doctors who supply their own medicines.
But we remember an instance of a young doctor destroying his career by
means just the contrary of this—that is, by suspecting that poison had
been administered, when such was not the case. One of his patients, a
lady, who seemed to have nothing worse than a cold, died very suddenly.
The doctor had reason to believe that this lady and her husband had
been living on bad terms, so he not only refused to certify as to
the causes of death, but openly hinted his suspicions that there had
been foul-play. At the inquest, however, it was proved that the lady
had died from heart-disease; and the reports about her having been
on bad terms with her husband were shown to have proceeded from the
malicious tattle of a busybody. As a result of this affair, the doctor
lost almost all his patients. It was thought that he had not behaved
with discretion; and his ruin was consummated by an action for slander
brought against him by the widower, whom he had too hastily accused of
poisoning.
This action for slander reminds us of another case of ruin which had
some comical features, and was in fact related to us in a very humorous
way by a French journalist. The gentleman in question had accepted the
editorship of a small daily newspaper published in a Belgian city. His
salary was to be twenty pounds a month, with free board and lodging
in the house of his employer, a notary, who owned the newspaper. Our
friend discharged his duties to everybody’s satisfaction for about five
years, when a bustling young journalist of the locality became intimate
with the notary, and pointed out to him that he—the bustling one—could
edit the paper quite as well as our friend, and for half the money.
Our friend had just applied for an increase of salary; so the notary,
with unreflecting parsimony, resolved to dispense with his services,
and installed the bustling young man in his chair. But not more than
a fortnight afterwards, the Bustling One, either from negligence, or
because he had some private grudge to pay off, inserted a libellous
paragraph against a banker in the town. An action was instituted. The
proprietor of the paper was sentenced to pay a large sum by way of
damages, with all the costs of the trial, and the advertisement of the
judgment—filling about two columns of small print—in twenty newspapers
of France and Belgium. This heavy fine, the numberless worries
attendant upon the action for libel, and the loss of professional
status which accrued to the lawyer from the whole thing, proved the
death of the newspaper. As our friend remarked: ‘I think the notary
would have found it cheaper to raise my salary.’