"You have had it washed!"

Lucy (unpacking her things in her bedroom). "Who is Mr. Hardie, dear?"

"What! don't you know? Mr. Hardie is the great banker."

"Only a banker? I should have taken him for something far more distinguished. His manner is good. There is a suavity without feebleness or smallness."

Mrs. Bazalgette's eye flashed, but she answered with apparent nonchalance: "I am glad you like him; you will take him off my hands now and then. He must not be neglected; Bazalgette would murder us.

_Apropos,_ remind me to ask him to tell you Mr. Hardie's story, and how he comes to be looked up to like a prince in this part of the world, though he is only a banker, with only ten thousand a year."

"You make me quite curious, aunt. Cannot you tell me?"

"Me? Oh, dear, no! Paper currency, foreign loans, government securities, gold mines, ten per cents, Mr. Peel, and why _one_ breaks and _another_ doesn't! all that is quite beyond me.

Bazalgette is your man. I had no idea your mousseline-delame would have washed so well. Why, it looks just out of the shop; it--" Come away, reader, for Heaven's sake!

CHAPTER XI.

THE man whom Mr. Bazalgette introduced so smoothly and off-hand to Lucy Fountain exercised a terrible influence over her life, as you will see by and by. This alone would make it proper to lay his antecedents before the reader. But he has independent claims to this notice, for he is a princ.i.p.al figure in my work. The history of this remarkable man's fortune is a study. The progress of his mind is another, and its past as well as its future are the very corner-stone of that capacious story which I am now building brick by brick, after my fashion where the theme is large. I invite my reader, therefore, to resist the natural repugnance which delicate minds feel to the ring of the precious metals, and for the sake of the coming story to accompany me into AN OLD BANK.

The Hardies were goldsmiths in the seventeenth century; and when that business split, and the deposit and bill-of-exchange business went one way, and the plate and jewels another, they became bankers from father to son. A peculiarity attended them; they never broke, nor even cracked. Jew James Hardie conducted for many years a smooth, unostentatious and lucrative business. It professed to be a bank of deposit only, and not of discount. This was not strictly true. There never was a bank in creation that did not discount under the rose, when the paper represented commercial effects, and the indorsers were customers and favorites. But Mr. Hardie's main business was in deposits bearing no interest. It was of that nature known as "the legitimate banking business," a t.i.tle not, I think, invented by the customers, since it is a system dest.i.tute of that reciprocity which is the soul of all just and legitimate commercial relations.

You shall lend me your money gratis, and I will lend it out at interest: such is legitimate banking--in the opinion of bankers.

This system, whose decay we have seen, and whose death my young readers are like to see, flourished under old Hardie, green--as the public in whose pockets its roots were buried.

Country gentlemen and n.o.blemen, and tradesmen well-to-do, left floating balances varying from seven, five, three thousand pounds, down to a hundred or two, in his hands. His art consisted in keeping his countenance, receiving them with the air of a person conferring a favor, and investing the bulk of them in government securities, which in that day returned four and five per cent. As he did not pay one shilling for the use of the capital, he pocketed the whole interest. A small part of the aggregate balance was not invested, but remained in the bank coffers as a reserve to meet any accidental drain. It was a point of honor with the squires and rectors, who shared their incomes with him in a grateful spirit, never to draw their balances down too low; and more than once in this banker's career a gentleman has actually borrowed money for a month or two of the bank at four per cent, rather than exhaust his deposit, or, in other words, paid his debtor interest for the temporary use of his own everlasting property.

Such capitalists are not to be found in our day; they may reappear at the Millennium.

The banker had three clerks; one a youth and very subordinate, the other two steady old men, at good salaries, who knew the affairs of the bank, but did not chatter them out of doors, because they were allowed to talk about them to their employer; and this was a vent. The tongue must have a regular vent or random explosions--choose! Besides the above compliment paid to years of probity and experience, the ancient _regime_ bound these men to the interest and person of their chief by other simple customs now no more.

At each of the four great festivals of the Church they dined with Mr.

and Mrs. Hardie, and were feasted and cordially addressed as equals, though they could not be got to reply in quite the same tone. They were never scorned, but a peculiar warmth of esteem and friendship was shown them on these occasions. One reason was, the old-fangled banker himself aspired to no higher character than that of a man of business, and were not these clerks men of business good and true? his staff, not his menials?

And since I sneered just now at a vital simplicity, let me hasten to own that here, at least, it was wise, as well as just and worthy.

Where men are forever handling heaps of money, it is prudent to fortify them doubly against temptation--with self-respect, and a sufficient salary.

It is one thing not to be led into temptation (accident on which half the virtue in the world depends), another to live in it and overcome it; and in a bank it is not the conscience only that is tempted, but the senses. Piles of glittering gold, amiable as Hesperian fruit; heaps of silver paper, that seem to whisper as they rustle, "Think how great we are, yet see how little; we are fifteen thousand pounds, yet we can go into your pocket; whip us up, and westward ho! If you have not the courage for that, at all events wet your finger; a dozen of us will stick to it. That pen in your hand has but to scratch that book there, and who will know? Besides, you can always put us back, you know."

Hundreds and thousands of men take a share in the country's public morality, legislate, build churches, and live and die respectable, who would be jail-birds sooner or later if their sole income was the pay of a banker's clerk, and their eyes, and hands, and souls rubbed daily against hundred-pound notes as his do. I tell you it is a temptation of forty-devil power.

Not without reason, then, did this ancient banker bestow some respect and friendship on those who, tempted daily, brought their hands pure, Christmas after Christmas, to their master's table. Not without reason did Mrs. Hardie pet them like princes at the great festivals, and always send them home in the carriage as persons their entertainers delighted to honor. Herein I suspect she looked also, woman-like, to their security; for they were always expected to be solemnly, not improperly, intoxicated by the end of supper; no wise fuddled, but muddled; for the graceful superst.i.tion of the day suspected severe sobriety at solemnities as churlish and ungracious.

The bank itself was small and grave, and a trifle dingy, and bustle there was none in it; but if the stream of business looked sluggish and narrow, it was deep and quietly incessant, and tended all one way--to enrich the proprietor without a farthing risked.

Old Hardie had sat there forty years with other people's money overflowing into his lap as it rolled deep and steady through that little counting-house, when there occurred, or rather recurred, a certain phenomenon, which comes, with some little change of features, in a certain cycle of commercial changes as regularly as the month of March in the year, or the neap-tides, or the harvest moon, but, strange to say, at each visit takes the country by surprise.

CHAPTER XII.

THE nation had pa.s.sed through the years of exhaustion and depression that follow a long war; its health had returned, and its elastic vigor was already reviving, when two remarkable harvests in succession, and an increased trade with the American continent, raised it to prosperity. One sign of vigor, the roll of capital, was wanting; speculation was fast asleep. The government of the day seems to have observed this with regret. A writer of authority on the subject says that, to stir stagnant enterprise, they directed "the Bank of England to issue about four millions in advances to the state and in enlarged discounts." I give you the man's words; they doubtless carry a signification to you, though they are jargon in a fog to me. Some months later the government took a step upon very different motives, which incidentally had a powerful effect in loosening capital and setting it in agitation. They reduced to four per cent the Navy Five per Cents, a favorite national investment, which represented a capital of two hundred millions. Now, when men have got used to five per cent from a certain quarter, they cannot be content with four, particularly the small holders; so this reduction of the Navy Five per Cents unsettled several thousand capitalists, and disposed them to search for an investment. A flattering one offered itself in the nick of time. Considerable attention had been drawn of late to the mineral wealth of South America, and one or two mining companies existed, but languished in the hands of professed speculators. The public now broke like a sudden flood into these hitherto sluggish channels of enterprise, and up went the shares to a high premium.

Almost contemporaneously, numerous joint-stock companies were formed, and directed toward schemes of internal industry. The small capitalists that had sold out of the Navy Five per Cents threw themselves into them all, and being bona fide speculators, drew hundreds in their train. Adventure, however, was at first restrained in some degree by the state of the currency. It was low, and rested on a singularly sound basis. Mr. Peel's Currency Bill had been some months in operation; by its princ.i.p.al provision the Bank of England was compelled on and after a certain date to pay gold for its notes on demand. The bank, antic.i.p.ating a consequent rush for gold, had collected vast quant.i.ties of sovereigns, the new coin; but the rush never came, for a mighty simple reason. Gold is convenient in small sums, but a burden and a nuisance in large ones. It betrays its presence and invites robbers; it is a bore to lug it about, and a fearful waste of golden time to count it. Men run upon gold only when they have reason to distrust paper. But Mr. Peel's Bill, instead of damaging Bank of England paper, solidified it, and gave the nation a just and novel confidence in it. Thus, then, the large h.o.a.rd of gold, fourteen to twenty millions, that the caution of the bank directors had acc.u.mulated in their coffers, remained uncalled for. But so large an abstraction from the specie of the realm contracted the provincial circulation. The small business of the country moved in fetters, so low was the metal currency. The country bankers pet.i.tioned government for relief, and government, listening to representations that were no doubt supported by facts, and backed by other interests, tampered with the principle of Mr. Peel's Bill, and allowed the country bankers to issue 1 pound and 2 pound notes for eleven years to come.

To this step there were but six dissentients in the House of Commons, so little was its importance seen or its consequences foreseen. This piece of inconsistent legislation removed one restraint, irksome but salutary, from commercial enterprise at a moment when capital was showing some signs of a feverish agitation. Its immediate consequences were very encouraging to the legislator; the country bankers sowed the land broadcast with their small paper, and this, for the cause above adverted to, took _pro tem._ the place of gold, and was seldom cashed at all except where silver was wanted. On this enlargement of the currency the arms of the nation seemed freed, enterprise shot ahead unshackled, and unwonted energy and activity thrilled in the veins of the kingdom. The rise in the prices of all commodities which followed, inevitable consequence of every increase in the currency, whether real or fict.i.tious, was in itself adverse to the working cla.s.ses; but the vast and numerous enterprises that were undertaken, some in the country itself, some in foreign parts, to which English workmen were conveyed, raised the price of labor higher still in proportion; so no cla.s.s was out of the sun.

Men's faces shone with excitement and hope. The dormant hordes of misers crept out of their napkins and sepulchral strong-boxes into the warm air of the golden time. The mason's chisel chirped all over the kingdom, and the shipbuilders'* hammers rang all round the coast; corn was plenty, money became a drug, labor wealth, and poverty and discontent vanished from the face of the land. Adventure seemed all wings, and no lumbering carca.s.s to clog it. New joint-stock companies were started in crowds as larks rise and darken the air in winter;**

hundreds came to nothing, but hundreds stood, and of these nearly all reached a premium, small in some cases, high in most, fabulous in some; and the ease with which the first calls for cash on the mult.i.tudinous shares were met argued the vast resources that had hitherto slumbered in the nation for want of promising investments suited to the variety of human likings and judgments. The mind can hardly conceive any species of earthly enterprise that was not fitted with a company, oftener with a dozen, and with fifty or sixty where the proposed road to metal was direct. Of these the mines of Mexico still kept the front rank, but not to the exclusion of European, Australian and African ore.

* Two hundred new vessels are said to have been laid on the stocks in one year.

** In two years 624 new companies were projected.

That masterpiece of fiction, "the Prospectus,"* diffused its gorgeous light far and near, lit up the dark mine, and showed the minerals shining and the jewels peeping; shone broad over the smiling fields, soon to be plowed, reaped, and mowed by machinery; and even illumined the depths of the sea, whence the buried treasures of ancient and modern times were about to be recovered by the Diving-bell Company.

* There is a little unlicked anonymuncule going scribbling about, whose creed seems to be that a little camel, to be known, must be examined and compared with other quadrupeds, but that the great arts can be judged out of the depths of a penny-a-liner's inner consciousness, and to be rated and ranked need not be compared _inter se._ Applying the microscope to the method of the novelist, but diverting the gla.s.s from the learned judge's method in Biography, the learned historian's method in History, and the daily chronicler's method in dressing _res gestoe_ for a journal, this little addle-pate has jumped to a comparative estimate, not based on comparison, so that all his blindfold vituperation of a n.o.ble art is chimera, not reasoning; it is, in fact, a retrograde step in science and logic. This is to evade the Baconian method, humble and wise, and crawl back to the lazy and self-confident system of the ancients, that kept the world dark so many centuries. It is [Greek]

versus Induction. "[Greek]," ladies, is "divination by means of an a.s.s's skull." A pettifogger's skull, however, will serve the turn, provided that pettifogger has been bitten with an insane itch for scribbling about things so infinitely above his capacity as the fine arts. Avoid this sordid dreamer, and follow, in letters as in science, the Baconian method! Then you will find that all uninspired narratives are more or less inexact, and that one, and one only, Fiction proper, has the honesty to antidote its errors by professing inexact.i.tude. You will find that the Historian, Biographer, Novelist, and Chronicler are all obliged _to paint upon their data_ with colors the imagination alone can supply, and all do it--alive or dead.

You will find that Fiction, as distinguished from neat mendacity, has not one form upon earth, but a dozen. You will find the most habitually, willfully, and inexcusably inaccurate, with the means of accuracy under its nose, that form of fiction called "anonymous criticism," political and literary; the most equivocating, perhaps, is the "imaginavit," better known at Lincoln's Inn as the "affidavit." In the article of exaggeration, the mildest and tamest are perhaps History and the Novel, the boldest and most sparkling is the Advertis.e.m.e.nt, but the grandest, ablest, most gorgeous and plausibly exaggerating is surely the grave commercial prospectus, drawn up and signed by potent, grave and reverend seniors, who fear G.o.d, worship Mammon, revere big wigs right or wrong, and never read romances.

One mine was announced with a "vein of ore as pure and solid as a tin flagon."

In another the prospectus offered mixed advantages. The ore lay in so romantic a situation, and so thick, that the eye could be regaled with a heavenly landscape, while the foot struck against neglected lumps of gold weighing from two pounds to fifty.

This put the Bolanos mine on its mettle, and it announced, "not mines, but mountains of silver." Here, then, men might chip metal instead of painfully digging it. With this, up went the shares till they reached 500 premium.

Tialpuxahua was done at 199 premium.

Anglo Mexican 10 pounds paid, went to 158 pounds premium.

United Mexican 10 " " , " 155 pounds "

Columbian 10 " " , " 82 pounds "

But the Real del Monte, a mine of longer standing, on which 70 pounds was paid up, went to 550 premium, and at a later period, for I am not following the actual sequence of events, reached the enormous height of 1350 premium.

The Prospectus of the Equitable Loan Company lamented in paragraph one the imposition practiced on the poor, and denounced the p.a.w.nbrokers'

15 per cent. In paragraph four it promised 40 per cent to its shareholders.

Philanthropy smiled in the heading, and Avarice stung in the tail. No wonder a royal duke and other good names figured in this concern.

Another eloquent sheet appealed to the national dignity. Should a nation that was just now being intersected by forty ca.n.a.l companies, and lighted by thirty gas companies, and every life in it worth a b.u.t.ton insured by a score of insurance companies, dwell in hovels?

Here was a country that, after long ruling the sea, was now mining the earth, and employing her spoils n.o.bly, lending money to every nation and tribe that would fight for const.i.tutional liberty. Should the princ.i.p.al city of so sovereign a nation be a collection of dingy dwellings made with burned clay? No; let these perishable and ign.o.ble, materials give way, and London be granite, or at least wear a granite front--with which up went the Red Granite Company.

A railway was projected from Dover to Calais, but the shares never came into the market.

The Rhine Navigation shares were snapped up directly. The original holders, having no faith in their own paper, sold large quant.i.ties directly for the account. But they had underrated the ardor of the public. At settling day the shares were at 28 premium, and the sellers found they had made a most original hedge; for "the hedge" is not a daring operation that grasps at large gains; it is a timid and cautious maneuver, whose humble aim is to lower the figures of possible loss or gain. To be ruined by a stroke of caution so shocked the directors' sense of justice that they forged new coupons in imitation of the old, and tried to pa.s.s them off. The fraud was discovered; a committee sat on it. Respectables quaked. Finally, a scapegoat was put forward and expelled the Stock Exchange, and with that the inquiry was hushed. It would have let too much daylight in on a host of "good names" in the City and on 'Change.

At the same time, the country threw itself with ardor into Transatlantic loans. This, however, was an existing speculation vastly dilated at the period we are treating, but created about five years earlier. Its antecedent history can be dispatched in a few words.