Christopher Crayon's Recollections. The Life and Times of the late James Ewing Ritchie as told by himself

CHAPTER XV.
How I Was Made a Fool Of

At length I am in the home of the free, where all men are equal, where O’Donovan Rossa may seek to blast the glories of a thousand years, where a Henry George may pave the way for an anarchy such as the world has never yet seen, where even Jem Blaine, as his admirers term him, passes for an honest man, and claims to have a firm grip on the Presidential chair.

I am unfortunate on my landing. I have the name of one of Cook’s hotels on my lips, and as I know Mr. John Cook makes better terms for his customers than they can do for themselves, I resolve to go there, but every one tells me there is no such hotel as that I ask for in New York, and I am taken to one which is recommended by a respectable-looking policeman. Unfortunately, it is the head-quarters of the veteran corps of the Army of the Potomac, who swarm all over the place, as they did all over the South in the grand times of old. I am not fond of heroes; heroes are the men who have kept out of danger, while their less fortunate comrades have been mowed down, and who appropriate the honours which belong often to the departed alone. Well, these heroes are holding the fort so tightly that I resolve to leave my quarters and explore the Broadway, one of the most picturesque promenades in the world. Suddenly I meet a stranger, who asks me how I am. I reply he has the advantage of me. “Oh,” says he, “you were at our store last night.” I reply that was impossible. He tells me his name is Bodger, I tell him my name, which, however, he does not catch, whereupon he shakes my hand again, says how happy he is to have met me, and we part to meet no more. I go a few steps farther, and go through the same process with another individual. I bear his congratulations with fortitude, but when, a few minutes after, the same thing occurs again, I begin to wish I were in Hanover rather than in New York, and I resolve to seek out Cook’s Agency without further delay. Of course I was directed wrong, and that led to a disaster which will necessarily shorten my visit to Uncle Sam. Perhaps I ought not to tell my experience. People generally are silent when they have to tell anything to their own discredit. If I violate that rule, it will be to put people on their guard. If I am wrong in doing so, I hope the rigid moralist will skip this altogether.

Suddenly, a young man came rushing up to me, with a face beaming with joy. “Good morning, Mr. – ,” he exclaimed; “I am so glad we have met.” I intimated that I did not recollect him. “Oh!” said he, “we came over in the Sarnia together.” Well, the story was not improbable. Of the 1,000 on board the Sarnia I could not be expected to remember all. “My name is G.,” mentioning a well-known banker in London, and then he began to tell me of his travels, at what hotel he was staying, and finally added that he had been presented with a couple of Longfellow’s Poems, handsomely bound, as a prize, and that he would be glad if I would accept one. Well, as my copy of Longfellow was rather the worse for wear, I told him I would accept it with pleasure. But I must come with him for it. I did so, and while doing so learned from him that the prize had been given in connection with a lottery scheme for raising money to build a church down South. The idea seemed to me odd, but Brother Jonathan’s ways are not as ours, and I was rather pleased to find that I had thus a new chance of seeing religious life, and of having something fresh to write about. I am free to confess, as the great Brougham was wont to say, I jumped at the offer. In a few minutes we were inside a respectable-looking house, where a tall gentleman invited us to be seated, regretting that the copies of Longfellow had not come home from the binder’s, and promising that we should have them by noon. Next he unfolded what I thought was a plan of the proposed church, but which proved to be a chart with figures – with prizes, as it seemed to me, to all the figures. To my horror my friend took up the cards, and asked me to select them for him. This I did, and he won a thousand dollars, blessing me as he shook hands with me warmly, and saying that as I had won half I must have half. Well, as the ticket had certain conditions, and as I felt that it was rather hard on the church to take all that money, I continued the game for a few minutes, my young friend being eager that I should do so, till the truth dawned upon me that I had been drawn into a swindlers’ den, and that I and my friend were dupes, and I resolved to leave off playing, much to the regret of my friend, who gave the keeper of the table a cheque for £100, which he would pay for me, as I would not, and thus by another effort retrieve my loss. There was one spot only on the board marked blank, and that, of course, was his. Burning with indignation I got up to go, my friend following me, saying how much he regretted that he had led me into such a place, offering to pay me half my losses when he returned to town, and begging me not to say a word about the subject when I got back to London, as it might get him into a row. I must say, so great has been my experience of honour among men, and never having been in New York before, I believed in that young man till we parted, as I did not see how he could have gained all the knowledge he displayed of myself and movements unless he had travelled with me as he said, and had never heard of Bunkum men. I had not gone far, however, before I was again shaken by the hand by a gentlemanly young fellow, who claimed to have met me at Montreal, where he had been introduced to me as the son of Sir H – A – . He had been equally lucky – had got two books, and, as he was going back to Quebec that very afternoon, would give me one of them if I would ride with him as far as his lodgings. Innocently I told him my little tale. He advised me to say nothing about it, as I had been breaking the law and might get myself into trouble, and then suddenly recollecting he must get his ticket registered, and saying that he would overtake me directly, left me to go as far as the place of our appointed rendezvous alone. Then the truth flashed on me that both my pretended friends were rogues, and that I had been the victim of what, in New York, they call the Bunkum men, who got 300 dollars out of Oscar Wilde, and a good deal more out of Mr. Adams, formerly American Ambassador in England. I had never heard of them, I own, and both the rogues had evidently got so much of my history by heart that I might well fancy that they were what they described themselves to be. As to finding them out to make them regorge that was out of the question. Landlords and policemen seemed to take it quite as a matter of course that the stranger in New York is thus to be done. Since then I have hardly spoken to a Yankee, nor has a Yankee spoken to me. I now understand why the Yankees are so reserved, and never seem to speak to each other. They know each other too well. I now understand also how the men you meet look so thin and careworn, and can’t sleep at nights. We are not all saints in London. Chicago boasts that it is the wickedest city in the world, but I question whether New York may not advance a stronger claim to the title. Yet what an Imperial city is New York! How endless is its restless life! and how it runs over with the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and worldly pride! As I wandered to the spot in Wall Street (where, by the bye, the stockbrokers and their clerks are not in appearance to be compared to our own) I felt, sad as I was, a thrill of pleasure run through me, as there Washington took the oath as the first President of the young and then pure Republic; and then, as the evening came on, I strolled up and down in the park-like squares by means of which New York looks like a fairy world by night, with the people sitting under the shade of the trees, resting after the labours of the day; while afar the gay crowds are dining or supping at Delmonico’s, or wandering in and out of the great hotels which rear their heads like palaces – as I looked at all that show and splendour (and in London we have nothing to compare with it), one seemed to forget how evanescent was that splendour, how unreal that show! I was reminded of it, however, as I retired to rest, by the announcement that in one part of my hotel was the way to the fire-escape, and by the notice in my bedroom that the proprietor would not be responsible for my boots if I put them outside the door to be blackened. In New York there seems to be no confidence in anybody or anything.

As I told my story to a sweet young American lady she said, “Ah, you must have felt very mean.” “Not a bit of it,” said I; “the meanness seemed to be all on the other side.” Americans talk English, so they tell me, better than we do ourselves! Since then I have seen the same game played elsewhere. In Australia I have heard of many a poor emigrant robbed in this way. A plausible looking gentleman tried it on with me at Melbourne when I was tramping up and down Burke Street one frying afternoon. He had come with me, he said, by the steamer from Sydney to Melbourne. I really thought I had met him at Brisbane. At any rate, his wife was ill, and he was going back with her to London by the very steamer that I was travelling by to Adelaide. Would I come with him as far as the Club? Of course I said yes. The Melbourne Club is rather a first-class affair. But somehow or other we did not get as far as the Club. My friend wanted to call on a friend in a public-house on the way. Would I have a drink? No, I was much obliged, but I did not want a drink. I sat down smoking, and he came and sat beside me. Presently a decent-looking man came up to my new friend with a bill. “Can’t you wait till to-morrow?” asked my friend. “Well, I am rather pressed for money,” said the man, respectfully. “Oh, then, here it is,” said my friend, pulling a heap of gold, or what looked like it, out of his pocket. “By the bye,” said he, turning to me, “I am a sovereign short; can you lend me one?” No, I could not. Could I lend him half-a-sovereign? No; I could not. Could I lend him five shillings? I had not even that insignificant sum to spare. “Oh, it does not matter,” said my friend; “I can get the money over the way, I will just go and fetch it, and will be back in five minutes.” And he and his confederate went away together to be seen no more by me. Certainly he was not on board the Austral, as I took my passage in her to Adelaide.

As I left I met a policeman.

“Have you any rogues in these parts?” I innocently asked.

“Well, we have a few. There was one from New York a little while ago, but he had to go back home. He said he was no match for our Melbourne rogues at all.” It was well that I escaped scot-free. On the steamer in which I returned there was a poor third-class passenger who had lost his all in such a way. He was fool enough to let the man treat him to a drink, and that little drink proved rather a costly affair. All his hard-earned savings had disappeared.

CHAPTER XVI.
Interviewing the President

It is about time, I wrote one day in America, I set my face homeward. When on the prairie I was beginning to speculate whether I should ever be fit to make an appearance in descent society again. Now, it seems to me, the question to be asked is, Whether I have not soared so high in the world as to have lost all taste for the frugal simplicity of that home life, where, in the touching words of an American poet I met with this morning, it is to be trusted my

 
Daughters are acting day by day,
So as not to bring disgrace on their papa far away.
 

Here, in Washington, I am made to pass for an “Honourable,” in spite of my modest declarations to the contrary, and have had the honour of a private interview with the greatest man in this part of the world – the President of the United States. One night, when I retired to rest, I found my bedroom on the upper storey – contiguous to the fire-escape, a convenience you are always bound to remember in the U.S. – had been changed for a magnificent bedroom, with a gorgeous sitting-room attached, on the first floor, and there loomed before me a terrific vision of an hotel bill which I supposed I should have to pay: but then, “What’s the odds so long as you are happy?” The question is, How came the change to be made? Well, the fact is, I had a letter to a distinguished politician, the Hon. Senator B – , and he, in his turn, sent me a packet addressed to the Hon. J. E – R – ; and all at once I became a great man myself in the hotel. In a note Mr. B – sent to the President he informed him that I had been for thirty years a correspondent of certain papers; and in another note to officials he has the goodness to speak of me as “the Hon. Mr. R – , a distinguished citizen and journalist of England.” Certainly, then, I have as good a right to the best accommodation the hotel affords as any other man, and accordingly I do take my ease in my inn, and not dream, but do dwell, in marble halls, while obsequious blackies fan me as I eat my meals, which consist of all the dainties possible – the only things a fellow can eat this hot weather. I am glad I have put up at Ebbet House, Washington, where I am in clover. Like Bottom, I feel myself “translated.” At Baltimore, the only night I was there, I did not get a minute’s sleep till daylight, because the National Convention of Master Plumbers was holding its annual orgy just beneath, and I seriously believed the place would be burned down before the morning. In the dignified repose of Ebbet House I have no such fear; my only anxiety is as to how I can ever again reconcile myself to the time-honoured cold mutton of domestic life after all this luxurious living. What made Senator B – confer the dignity of Hon. on me I am at a loss to understand. I know there are times when I think it right and proper to blow my own trumpet in the unavoidable absence of my trumpeter; but, in the present instance, I must candidly confess to have done nothing of the kind. It is to be presumed that my improved position, as regards lodging in Ebbet House, Washington, is to be attributed to the social status given me by Senator B – , a gentleman who, in personal appearance and size, bears somewhat of a resemblance to our late lamented Right Hon. W. E. Forster, with the exception that Mr. B – brushes his hair – a process which evidently our Bradford M.P. disdained.

This morning I have shaken hands with the President at the White House – a modest building not larger than our Mansion House, and, like that, interesting for its many associations. Mr. Arthur is in the prime of life – a tall, well-made man, with dark-brown hair and eyes, of rather sluggish temperament, apparently. He did not say much to me, nor, I imagine, does he say much to anybody. His plan seems to be to hear and see as much, and say as little as he can. We met in a room upstairs, where, from ten to eleven, he is at home to Congress men, who would see him on public affairs before Congress meets, as eleven in the morning is the usual hour when it commences business. There were seven or eight waiting to speak to the President as he stood up at his table, so as to get the light on his visitors’ faces, while his own was shaded as much as possible; and, owing to the heat in Washington, the houses are kept so shaded that, coming out of the clear sunlight, it is not always easy at the first glance to see where you are. The President did not seem particularly happy to see anybody, and looked rather bored as the Senators and Congress men buttonholed him. Of course, our conversation was strictly private and confidential, and wild horses shall never tear the secret from me. Posterity must remain in the dark. It is one of those questions never to be revealed, as much so as that which so provoked the ancients as to the song the syrens sang to Ulysses. The President’s enemies call him the New York dude, because he happens to be a gentlemanly-looking man, and patronises Episcopalianism, which in America, as in England, is reckoned “the genteel thing.” The Americans are hard to please. Mr. James Russell Lowell had got the gout, and the New York writers said, when I was there, he had attained the object of a snob’s ambition. It is thus they talked of one of their country’s brightest ornaments. But to return to the President. He is a wise man, and keeps his ears open and his mouth shut – a plan which might be adopted by other statesmen with manifest advantage to themselves and the community. The President wore a morning black coat, with a rose in his buttonhole, and had the air about him of a man accustomed to say to one, “Come,” and he comes; to another, “Go,” and he goes. I made some few remarks about Canada and America, to which he politely listened, and then we shook hands and parted, he to be seized on by eager Congress men, I to inspect the public apartments of the White House. He has rather a hard life of it, I fancy, as he has to work all day, and his only relaxation seems to be a ride in the evening, as there are no private grounds connected with the House. In the model Republic privacy is unknown. Everything is open and aboveboard. Intelligent citizens gain much thereby.

As to interviewing Royalty, that is another affair. An American interviews his President as a right. In the Old World monarchs keep people at arm’s-length. And they are right. No man is a hero to his valet. But I have interviewed the President of the United States; that is something to think of. The interview was a farce – but such is life.

CHAPTER XVII.
A Bank Gone

“Was there much of a sensation there when you left B – this morning?” said the manager of a leading daily to me as I was comfortably seated in his pleasant room in the fine group of buildings known to all the world as the printing and publishing offices of The West Anglian Daily, where I had gone in search of a little cash, which, happily, I obtained.

“None at all,” said I, in utter ignorance of what he was driving at. “None at all; no one knew I was leaving,” and I smiled as if I had said something good.

“No, I did not mean that,” said the manager. “It seems you have not heard the news. Brown and Co. have suspended payment. We have just had a telegram to that effect,” which he handed me to read. “Do you bank there?” he asked.

“Upon my word,” I said, “I don’t know. I never read the name of the firm; I only know that I pay a small sum in monthly, and write a few cheques as occasion requires.”

“You’re a pretty fellow,” said the manager.

“Now I come to think of it,” said I, “that must be my bank, as there is no other in the place, except a small branch which has just been opened within the last few months by Burney and Co.”

“Well, I am sorry for you,” said my friend.

“Oh, it don’t matter much to me,” I replied, with a vain attempt at a smile. Yet I was terribly annoyed, nevertheless. I had let my deposit increase more than was my general habit, thinking as Christmas was coming I would postpone settling little accounts till after the festivities of the Christmas season were over. I was now lamenting I had done anything of the kind. I was not very happy. Our little town of B – is a rising place, where people come and spend a lot of money in the summer. Some spirited individual or other is always putting up new buildings. Speculation is rife, and the tradesmen hope to grow prosperous as the place prospers. Anybody with half-a-crown in his pocket to spare is hardly ever seen. They all bank at Brown’s. I daresay such of them as are able overdraw. Private bankers who are anxious to do business offer great facilities in this respect; but still there are many, chiefly poor widows and sailors who make a little money in the summer, and they bank it all. We have a church that is about to be enlarged, and the money that has been raised for the purpose was placed in the bank, and we have a few retired officers and tradesmen who have their money there. “They ha’ got £300 of my money,” said an angry farmer, as he banged away at the closed door, on which a notice was suspended that, in consequence of temporary difficulties, the bank had stopped payment for a few days. “You might ha’ given a fellow the hint to take out his money,” said another irritated individual to the manager, whom persistent knocking had brought to the door. I was sorry for the manager; he always wore a smile on his face. That smile had vanished as the last rose of summer. No one in B – was more upset than he was when the catastrophe occurred. Some of the knowing ones in town had smelt a rat; one or two depositors had drawn out very heavily. Our smiling manager had no conception of what was to happen till, just as he was sitting down to his breakfast, with his smiling wife and ruddy, fat-cheeked little ones, there came to him a telegram from headquarters to the effect that he was not to open, followed by a messenger with despatches of which he was as ignorant as the merest ploughboy. I must say that in the headquarters the secret was well kept, whatever the leakage elsewhere.

Coming back to B – , the bright little town seemed sitting in the shadow of death. “Any news?” said I to the station-master as I got out of the train. “Only that the bank is broke,” was the reply. “Ah! that won’t matter to you,” said one to me, “your friends will help you.” In vain I repeated that I had no friends. “Ah, well,” said another, “you can work; it is the old, the infirm, the sick, who are past work, for whom I am sorry.” And thus I am left to sleep off my losses as best I may, trying to believe that the difficulty is only temporary, and positively assured in some quarters that the bank will open all right next day. Alas! hope tells a flattering tale. Next morning, after a decent interval, to show that, like Dogberry, I am used to losses, I take my morning walk and casually pass the bank, only to see that the door is as firmly closed as ever; I read all the morning papers, and they tell me that the bank will be opened as usual at ten. I know better, and all I meet are sorrowing. One melancholy depositor, who tells me that the bank has all the money he has taken this summer and his pension besides, assures me that the bank will open at twelve. I pass two hours later, and it is still shut. Women are weeping as they see ruin staring them in the face. Woe to me; my butcher calls for his little account. I have to ask him to call again. I see the tax-gatherer eyeing me from afar, likewise the shoemaker; but I rush inside to find that the midday mail has arrived, bringing me a letter from town, as follows: “With respect to your cheque on Brown’s Bank, received yesterday, I regret to hear this day of the suspension of the bank. Under these circumstances your cheque will not be cleared, so that we shall have to debit your account with it.” This is pleasant. I have another cheque sent by the same post as the other. I begin to fear on that account. Happily, no more letters of that kind come in, and I take another turn in the open air. Every one looks grave. There are little knots of men standing like conspirators in every street. They are trying to comfort one another. “Oh, it will be all right,” I hear them exclaim; but they look as if they did not believe what they said, and felt it was all wrong. Now and then one steals away towards the bank, but the door is still shut, and he comes back gloomier-looking than ever. I am growing sad myself. I have not seen a smile or heard a pleasant word to-day, except from my neighbour, who chuckles over the fact that his account is overdrawn. He laughs on the other side of his mouth, however, when he realises the fact that he has cheques he has not sent in. Another day comes, and I know my fate. Some banks have agreed to come to the rescue. They will pay all bank-notes in full, and will make advances not exceeding 15s. in the pound in respect of credit accounts as may be necessary. Happily, our little town is safe. Another day or two of this strain on our credit must have thrown us all into a general smash. This is good as far as it goes, but I fail to see why the holder of one of Brown’s banknotes is to have his money in full, while I am to accept a reduction of five shillings in the pound or more. However, I have no alternative. I would not mind the reduction if my friends the creditors would accept a similar reduction in their little accounts. Alas! it is no use making such a proposal to them; I must grin and bear it. One consolation is that my wife – bless her! – is away holiday-making and does not need to ask me for cash. On the third day we begin to fear that we may not get ten shillings in the pound, and the post brings me back another cheque with a modest request for cash by return. All over the country there is weeping and wailing. One would bear it better a month hence. Christmas is coming! Already the bells are preparing to ring it in. I must put on the conventional smile. Christmas cards are coming in, wishing me a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! and, oh dear! I must say, Thank you! Alas! alas! troubles are like babies – the more you nurse them, the bigger they grow.

And now it is time for me to make my bow and retire. Having said that my bank was smashed up, I cannot expect any one to be subsequently interested in my proceedings. We live in a commercial country and a commercial age, and the men whom the society journals reverence are the men who have made large fortunes, either by their own industry and forethought and self-denial, or by the devil’s aid. And I am inclined to think that he has a good deal to do with the matter. If ever we are to have plain living and high thinking, we shall have to give up this wonderful worship of worldly wealth and show. Douglas Jerrold makes one of his heroes exclaim, “Every man has within him a bit of a swindler.” When Madame Roland died on the scaffold, whither she had been led by the so-called champions of liberty and equality and the rights of man, she exclaimed, as every school-boy knows, or ought to know, “Oh, Liberty, what crimes are done in thy name!” So say I, Oh, wealth, which means peace and happiness, and health and joy (Sydney Smith used to say that he felt happier for every extra guinea he had in his pocket, and most of us can testify the same), what crimes are done in thy name; not alone in the starvation of the poor, in the underpaying of the wage-earning class who help to make it, but in the way in which sharks and company promoters seek to defraud the few who have saved money of all their store. You recollect Douglas Jerrold makes the hero already referred to say, “You recollect Glass, the retired merchant? What an excellent man was Glass! A pattern man to make a whole generation by. What could surpass him in what is called honesty, rectitude, moral propriety, and other gibberish? Well, Glass grows a beard. He becomes one of a community, and immediately the latent feeling (swindling) asserts itself.” And the worst of it is that Glass as a company director and promoter is worshipped as a great man, especially if he secures a gratuitous advertisement by liberality in religious and philanthropic circles, and exercises a lavish liberality in the way of balls and dinners. Society crawls at his feet as they used to do when poor Hudson, the ex-draper of York, reigned a few years in splendour as the Railway King. Glass goes everywhere, gets into Parliament. Rather dishonest, a sham and a fraud as he is, we make him an idol, and then scorn far-away savages who make idols of sticks and stones.