Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843

"I was not aware, Mr Planner,"——

"Of course you were not. How should you be? It is the interest of the ruling powers to darken the intellect of society. Why am I kept down? Why don't I prosper? Why don't my works sell? Ah, Allcraft—put that small pamphlet in your pocket—there it is—under the model—take care what you are about—don't break it—there, that's right! What is it called?"

"Popular delusions."

"Ah, true enough!—put it into your pocket and read it. If Pitt could be alive to read it!—-- Well, never mind! I say, Allcraft, how does that back room flue get on—any smoke now?"

"None."

"No. I should think not. Michael, I must say it, though the old gentleman is dead, he was one of the hardest fellows to move I ever met. He would have been smoke-dried—suffocated, years ago, if it hadn't been for me. I was the first man that ever sent smoke up that chimney. Nobody could do it, sir. A fellow came from London, tried, and failed."

"It is a pity, Mr Planner, that, with abilities like yours, you have not been more successful in life. Pardon me if I say that success would have made you a quieter and a happier man."

"Ah, Michael, so your father used to say! Well, I don't know—people are such fools. They will not think for themselves, and they are ready to crush any one who offers to think for them. It has ever been so. Men in advance of their generation have always fared badly. Ages ago they were put to death cruelly and violently. Now they are left to starve, and die. The creatures are ignorant, but they are worse than that; they are selfish and jealous, and will rather sit in gloom, than owe light, and confess they owe it, to a fellow mortal and a superior spirit."

"I am afraid, Mr Planner, after such an observation, that you will hardly give me credit for the feeling which has induced me to visit you this morning."

"You are a good fellow, Michael. You were always a generous-hearted lad—an exception to the general rule. When you were five years old, you used to share your biscuits with me. It was a fine trait in your character. Proceed."

"You are aware, Mr Planner, that through my father's death increased responsibilities have come upon me."

"You may say that. He never would take my advice about the bank-notes. Stop—remind me before you go, of the few hints to bankers, which I drew up. You will do well to look at them. You'll see the advantages of my system of paper issues. Your father, sir, was stone-blind to his own interests—— but I am interrupting you."

"I have for some time past determined to associate with me in the bank, two gentlemen of noble fortunes and the first respectability. I would not willingly carry on the concern alone, and the accession of two such gentlemen as I describe, cannot but be in every way desirable."

"Humph—go on."

"Now Mr Planner, you are a very, very old friend of my father's, and I know he valued your advice as it deserved to be."

"The old gentleman was good in the main, Michael."

"Had he been aware of my position, he would have recommended the step which I am about to adopt. Mr Planner, I am young, and therefore inexperienced. These gentlemen are very worthy persons no doubt; indeed, I am assured they are; still, they are comparatively strangers to me, and I am certain you would advise me to be most cautious."

"Proceed."

"What I feel to want is the constant presence of a friend—one who, from personal attachment, may have my welfare and interest at heart, and form as it were a second self at all times—let me be present or absent—and absent I must be very often—you perceive?"

"Precisely."

"A sort of counterpoise to the opposite weight, in fact, if I may be allowed to call it so. Now, I can sincerely affirm that I know no person, Mr Planner, in whom I could rely so entirely and unreservedly as yourself; and nothing would give me greater pleasure than to serve a man so highly gifted, so long connected with our family by the closest friendship. If you think the occupation of a banker suitable to your present tastes, I believe that I can offer you an appointment worthy your serious consideration."

Mr Planner rose in his bed, and grasped firmly the hand of Mr Michael Allcraft. The latter sat at the bedside until past three o'clock, and then retired, leaving his friend in a state of great mental excitement. When Michael, upon taking his departure, reached the street door, he stopped short, and retraced his steps. Entering the apartment for a second time, he discovered Mr Planner in his night clothes, standing before a looking glass, and repeating one of his own compositions in a voice of thunder, and with the most vehement gesticulation.

"I beg your pardon. You told me to remind you, Planner, of your hints to bankers. Have you the book handy?"

"It is here, Michael. Read it attentively, my boy—trust to me. I'll make the house's name ring throughout the country. Don't forget what I have said. We must have a new façade to the old building after a while. I have such a plan for it!"

CHAPTER II.

A LULL

Allcraft, Bellamy, Brammel, and Planner. It was a goodly ship that bore the name, and fair she looked at the launching; her sails well set, her streamers flying, and the music of men's voices cheering her on her career. Happy and prosperous be her course! We think not of winter's cold in the fervent summer time, and wreck and ruin seem impossible on the smooth surface of the laughing sea; yet cold and winter come, and the smiling, sweet-tempered ripple can awaken from slumber, and battle and storm with the heavens. Never had bark left haven with finer promises of success. We will follow her from the port, and keep watchfully in the good ship's wake.

Michael formed a just conclusion when he reckoned upon increase of business. His own marriage, and the immense wealth of his lady, had inspired the world with unbounded confidence. The names of two of his partners were household words in the county, and stood high amongst the best. A convulsion of nature may destroy the world in half an hour, as love, it is said, may transform a man into an oyster; but either of these contingencies was as remote as the possibility of Allcraft's failure. Silently and successfully the house went on. For a quarter of a year the sun shone brightly, and profit, and advantage, and honour, looked Michael in the face. Thriving abroad, happy at home, what did he need more? His spirit became buoyant—his heart carefree and light. He congratulated himself upon the prudence and success of his measures, and looked for his reward in the brilliant future which he had created for himself and earned. His soul was calmed; and so are the elements, fearfully and oppressively, sometimes an hour before the tempest and the storm.

At the end of three months, Michael deemed it necessary to go abroad. The heaviest of his father's debts had been contracted with a house in Lyons, and notices as to payment had been conveyed to him—notices as full of politeness as they were of meaning. The difficulties in which he had found himself at the death of his parent—the seriousness of his engagements—and the wariness which he had been compelled to exercise—had gone far to sober down the impetuous youth, and to endue him with the airs and habits of a man of business. He had attended to his duties at the banking-house faithfully and punctually. He had entered into its affairs with the energy and resolution of a practical and working mind. He had given his heart to the work, and had put his shoulder to the wheel, honestly and earnestly. Whatsoever may have been his faults previously to his connexion with his partners, it is due to him to say that he was no sluggard afterwards, and that he grudged neither time nor labour that could be in any way productive to the house—could add a shilling to its profits, or a breath of reputation to its name. To pay his father's debts from the earnings of the bank—to keep those debts a secret—and to leave the fortune of his wife untouched, were the objects for which he lived, and soon began to slave. Believing that a favourable arrangement could be effected with his father's creditors, he determined to visit them in person. He had not been absent from the bank even for a day; and now, before he could quit it with comfort, he deemed it necessary to have a few parting words with his right hand and factotum, Planner.

Planner was the only member of the firm who lived in the establishment. His specimens, his bottles, his maps, and drawings, had been removed to a spacious apartment over the place of business, and he rejoiced in the possession of an entire first floor. His bed-room had now a distinct existence. He had not enjoyed it for a week, before the water with which he performed his daily ablutions was insinuated by a cunning contrivance through the ceiling, and dismissed afterwards, as cleverly, through the floor. Hot water came through the wall at any hour of the day, and a constant artificial ventilation was maintained around his bed by night and day. There was no end to the artifices which the chamber exhibited. Michael, although he lived at a considerable distance from the bank, was always the first at his post, after Planner himself. He arrived unusually early on the day fixed for his visit to the Continent. Planner and he sat for an hour together, and in the course of their conversation, words to the following effect escaped them:—

"You will be careful and attentive, Planner. Let me hear from you by every post. Do not spare ink and paper."

"Trust me. I shall not forget it. But don't you miss the opportunity, Allcraft, of doing something with those mines. Your father wouldn't touch them—but he repented it. I tell you, Michael, if we bought them, and worked them ourselves, we might coin money! I'd go abroad and see the shafts sunk. I could save a fortune in merely setting them to rights."

"It is rather strange, Planner, that Brammel is so long absent. He should come home, and settle down to work. It isn't well to be away. It hasn't a fair appearance to the world. You saw his father yesterday. What said he?"

"Oh, that young Brammel had a good many things to arrange in Oxford and in the neighbourhood, and would soon be back now. But never mind him, Allcraft. Between ourselves, he is better where he is; he is a horrible ass."

"Hush. So he is, Planner, but he must not run wild. We must keep him at home. He has been a rackety one, and I fear he is not much better now. I question whether I should have received him here, if I had known as much of him at first as I have heard lately. But his father deceived me."

"Queer old man that, Michael! How he takes the boy's part always, and how frightened he seems lest you should think too badly of him. Young Brammel will have every farthing of the old man's money at his death. A pretty sum, too. A hundred thousand pounds, isn't it?"

"Well, Planner, let me know when he returns. That was a curious report about his marriage. Can it be true?"

"His father denies it, but you mustn't trust the old sinner when he talks about his son. He'll lie through thick and thin for him. They do say he lived with the girl at the time he was at college, and married her at last because her brother threatened to kick him."

"Nonsense, Planner."

"Why nonsense? More than half the marriages you hear of are scarcely a whit better. What are the rules for a correct match? Who obeys them? Where do you ever hear, now-a-days, of a proper marriage? People are inconsistent in this respect as in other things. A beauty marries a beast. A philosopher weds a fool. They can't tell you why, but they do it. It's the perversity of human nature."

"I shall look sharp after Brammel."

"Take my advice, Michael, and look after the mines. Brammel can take care of himself, or his wife and brother-in-law can do it. The timber on the property will realize the purchase money."

"Well, we shall see; but here is Mr Bellamy. Mind you write to me, and be explicit and particular."

"I shall do it, Michael."

"And mark, Planner; prudence—prudence."

And so saying, Michael advanced to Bellamy with a smiling countenance. An hour afterwards, both he and his lovely bride were comfortably seated in a post-chaise and four, admiring the garden-land of Kent, and speeding to Dover fast as their horses could carry them.

CHAPTER III.

A SWEET COUPLE

The very emphatic and somewhat vulgar expression of Mr Planner, was by no means ill-chosen to express the character of Augustus Theodore Brammel. He had been lovingly spoiled from his cradle—humoured and ruined with the most praiseworthy care and perseverance. His affectionate parents had studiously neglected the few goodly shoots which the youth had brought into the world with him, and had embarked all their energies in the cultivation of the weeds that grew noxious and numerous around the unhappy boy's heart. His mother lived to see her darling expelled from Eton—the father to see much worse, and yet not the worst that the hopeful one was doomed to undergo. Gross vices, if not redeemed, are rendered less hideous by intellectual power and brilliancy. Associated with impotency and ignorance, they are disgusting beyond expression. Augustus Brammel was the most sensual and self-engrossed of men— the most idle and dissipated; and, as if these were not enough to render him an object of the deepest aversion, he was as self-willed, thick-headed, overbearing a dunce as ever moved a man to that contempt "which wisdom holds unlawful ever;" and Brammel was not only a fool, but a conceited, upstart, irritating fool. He considered himself the shrewdest of mortals, and presumed to dictate, to be impertinent, to carry matters with a high hand and a flourish. As for modesty, the word was not in his dictionary. He had never known its meaning; and therefore, perhaps, in justice is not to be blamed for the want of it. Augustus, being a great blusterer, was of course a low coward. He bullied, oppressed, and crushed the helpless and the weak, who were avenged as often as he cowered and sneaked beneath the look of the strong and the brave. The companions and friends of such creatures as Brammel, are generally selected from the lower grades of life. The tone of feeling found amongst the worst members of these classes, harmonizes with their own. They think the like thoughts, talk the same language. They are led to them by the true Satanic impulse, for it is their triumph to reign in hell—their misery to serve in heaven. Flattered by the dregs and refuse of society, they endeavour to forget that they are avoided, spurned, trodden on, by any thing higher. Just when it was too late to profit by the discovery, old Brammel found out his mistake; and then he sagaciously vowed, that if his time were to come over again, he would educate his boy in a very different manner. His first attempt had certainly been a failure. Augustus had been rusticated at the university; he had run away from his home; he had committed all kinds of enormity. He had passed weeks in the sinks of London, and had been discovered at last by his heartbroken parent amongst the stews of Shadwell, in a fearful state of disease and destitution. Years were passed in proceedings of this nature, and every attempt at recovery proved abortive and useless. His debts had been discharged a dozen times, and on every occasion under a solemn engagement that it should be the last. When Brammel senior signed the deed of partnership on behalf of his son, the latter, as I have already said, was in Oxford, having returned to the university only a month before, at the termination of his period of banishment. Whilst the father was engaged in publishing the imaginary virtues of his son to most admiring listeners, the promising youth himself was passing his days in the very agreeable society of Miss Mary Anne Waters, the eldest daughter of the cook of his college—a young lady with some pretension to beauty, but none whatever to morality, being neither more nor less than Mr Augustus Brammel's very particular and chère amie. The letter which arrived with the unwelcome intelligence of the arrangement, found the charming pair together. A specimen of their discourse at the time, will show the temper with which the communication was received.

"I sha'n't go," ejaculated the youth. "I can't be nailed down to a desk. What business had the old man to do any thing without me? Why can't he mind his own affairs? He's old and ugly enough. It's cursed impudence in him, and that's a fact."