Various
Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846
MOSES AND SON
A Didactic Tale
Chapter I
"It's no good your talking, Aby," said a diminutive gentleman, with a Roman nose and generally antique visage; "you must do the best you can for yourself, and get your living in a respectable sort of vay. I can't do no more for you, so help my – "
"You're a nice father, aint you?" interrogatively replied the gentleman addressed – a youth of eighteen, very tall, very thin, very dressy, and very dirty. "I should like to know why you brought me into the world at all."
"To make a man of you, you ungrateful beast," answered the small father; "and that's vot you'll never be, as true as my name's Moses. You aint got it in you. You're as big a fool as any Christian in the parish."
"Thankee, old un," replied he of six feet. "'Twas nature's fault that made me like my father," he added immediately, throwing himself into a theatrical posture, and pointing irreverently to the individual referred to.
"There he goes again!" exclaimed Moses senior, with a heavy sigh. "That's another of his tricks that'll bring him to the gallows. Mark my words, Aby – that acting of yours will do your business. I vish the amytoors had been at the devil before you made their acquaintance!"
"In course you do, you illiterate old man. What do you know of literature? Aint all them gentlemen as I plays with chice sperits and writers? Isn't it a honour to jine 'em in the old English drammy, and to eat of the wittles and drink of the old ancient poets?"
"Aby, my dear," proceeded the other sarcastically, "I've only two vurds to say. You have skulked about this 'ere house for eighteen years of your precious life, vithout doing a ha'porth of work. It's all very fine while it lasts; but I am sorry to say it can't last much longer. To-morrow is Sabbath, make much of it, for it's the last blessed day of rest you'll see here. Sunday morning I'll trouble you to pack."
"Do you mean it?"
"Upon my soul – as true as I'm here."
"Hear that, ye gods, and wonder how you made him!" exclaimed Abraham, turning up his nose at his parent, and then looking to the ceiling with emotion – "You unnatural old Lear! you bloodless piece of earth!"
"Go 'long, go 'long!" said the prosaic Moses, senior; "don't talk rubbish!"
"Father!" cried the youth, with an attitude, "when I'm gone, you'll think of me, and want me back."
"Vait, my dear, till I send for you."
"When the woice is silent, you'll be glad to give a ten pun' note for an echo."
"No, my boy; I don't like the security."
"When you have lost sight of these precious featers, you'll be glad to give all you have got for a picter."
"Vot a lucky painter he'll be as draws you off!" said the stoic father.
Abraham Moses gazed upon the author of his being for one minute with intensest disgust. Then taking a chair in his hand, he first raised it in the air, and afterwards struck it with vehement indignation to the ground. That done, he seated himself with a mingled expression of injured innocence and lofty triumph.
"You old sinner," said he, "you've done for yourself."
"Sorry for it," replied the cool old gentleman.
"I've sounded you, have I? Oh! did I try to strike a chord in that hollow buzzum, and did I think to make it answer? Now listen, you disreputable father. I leave your house, not the day after to-morrow, but this very hour. I shall go to that high sphere which you knows nothing about, and is only fit for a gent of the present generation. I don't ask you for nothing. I'm settled and provided for. If you were to take out your cheque-book and say, 'Aby, fill it up,' I can't answer for a impulse of nater; but I do think I should scorn the act, and feel as though I had riz above it. You have told me, all my wretched life, that I should take my last snooze outside o' Newgate. I always felt very much obliged to you for the compliment; but you'll recollect that I've told you as often that I'd live to make you take your hat off to me. The time is come, sir! I've got an appointment! Such a one! I came to tell you of it; but I considered it my religious duty to inwestigate your paternal feelings concerning me aforehand. I have inwestigated 'em. I am sorry to say it; I have put you into the weighing machine, and found you short."
"The fool's mad!"
"Is he? Wait a minute. If your shocking eddication permits, I'll trouble you to read that there."
Mr Abraham Moses drew from his pocket a despatch, ornamented with a huge seal, and some official red tape. The elder gentleman took it into his hand, and gazed at his worthy son with unutterable surprise, as he read on the outside – "Private and confidential, House of Lords, to Abraham Moses, Esq., &c. &c. &c."
"Vy, vot does it all mean, my dear?" enquired the agitated parent.
"Spare your 'my dears,' venerable apostate, and open it," said Aby. "The seal's broke. It's private and confidential, but that means when you are not one of the family."
Mr Methusaleh Moses did as he was bid, and read as follows: —
"Sir, – The Usher of the Blue Rod vacates his office on Wednesday next, when you will be required to appear before the woolsack to take the usual oaths. As soon as you have entered upon your duties, the customary presentation to her Majesty will take place. Lord Downy will be prepared to conclude the preliminaries at his hotel at twelve o'clock to-morrow. – I am, sir, with respect, your obedient humble servant,
"Warren de Fitzalbert."Abraham Moses, Esq.,&c. &c. &c."
As little Mr Moses read the last words with a tremulous utterance, tall Mr Moses rose to take his departure. "Vot's your hurry, Aby?" said the former, coaxingly.
"Come, I like that. What's my hurry? Didn't you want to kick me out just now?"
"My dear, give every dog his due. Stick to the truth, my boy, votever you does. I axed you to stay over the Sabbath – I vish I may die if I didn't."
Mr Abraham Moses directed towards his sire one of those decided and deadly glances which are in so much request at the theatres, and which undertake to express all the moral sentiments at one and the same moment. Having paid this tribute to his wounded nature, he advanced to the door, and said, determinedly —
"I shall go!"
"I'm blessed if you do, Aby!" exclaimed the father, with greater resolution, and seizing his offspring by the skirts of his coat. "I'm your father, and I knows my sitivation. You're sich a fellow! You can't take a vurd in fun. Do you think I meant to turn you out ven I said it? Can you stop nater, Aby? Isn't nater at vork vithin, and doesn't it tell me if I knocks you on the nose, I hits myself in the eye? Come, sit down my boy; tell me all about it, and let's have someting to eat."
Aby was proof against logical argument, but he could not stand up against the "someting to eat." He sank into the chair again like an infant. Mr Methusaleh took quick advantage of his success. Rushing wildly to a corner cupboard, he produced from it a plate of cold crisp fried fish, which he placed with all imaginable speed exactly under the nose of the still vacillating Aby. He vacillated no longer. The spell was complete. The old gentleman, with a perfect reliance upon the charm, proceeded to prepare a cup of coffee at his leisure.
"And now, Aby," said the father, stirring the grounds of his muddy beverage – "I'm dying to hear vot it all means. How did you manage to get amongst dese people? You're more clever as your father." A hearty meal of fish and coffee had considerably greased the external and internal man of Aby Moses. His views concerning filial obligations became more satisfactory and humane; his spirit was evidently chastened by repletion.
"Father," said he, meaning to be very tender – "You have always been such a fool about the company as I keep."
"Well, so I have, my dear; but don't rake up the past."
"It's owing to that very company, father, that you sees me in my proud position."
"No!"
"It is, though. Lend me your ears."
"Don't be shtoopid, Aby – go on vith your story."
A slight curl might be seen playing around the dirty lip of Moses junior at this parental ignorance of the immortal Will: a stern sacrifice of filial reverence to poetry.
It passed away, and the youth proceeded.
"That Warren de Fitzalbert, father, as signed that dockyment, is a buzzum friend. He see'd me one night when I played Catesby, and, after the performance, requested the honour of an introduction, which I, in course, could not refuse. You know how it is – men gets intimate – tells one another their secrets – opens their hearts – and lives in one another's societies. I never knew who he was, but I was satisfied he was a superior gent, from the nateral course of his conversation. Everybody said it as beautiful to see us, we was so united and unseparated. Well, you may judge my surprise, when one day another gent, also a friend of mine, says to me, 'Moses, old boy, do you know who Fitzalbert is?' 'No,' says I, 'I don't.' 'Well, then,' says he, 'I'll tell you. He's a under secretary of state.' There was a go! Only think of me being hand and glove with a secretary of state! What does I do? Why, sir, the very next time he and I meet, I says to him, 'Fitzalbert, it's very hard a man of your rank can't do something for his friends.' I knew the right way was to put the thing to him point-blank. 'So it would be,' says he, 'if it was, but it isn't.' 'Oh, isn't it?' says I; 'then, if you are the man I take you to be, you'll do the thing as is handsome by me.' He said nothing then, but took hold of my hand, and shook it like a brother."
"Vell, go on, my boy; I tink they are making a fool of you."
"Are they? That's all you know. Well, a few days after this, Fitzalbert writes me a letter to call on him directly. I goes, of course. 'Moses,' says he, as soon as he sees me, 'you are provided for.' 'No!' says I. 'Yes,' says he. 'Lord Downy has overrun the constable; he can't stop in England no longer; he's going to resign the blue rod; he's willing to sell it for a song; you shall buy it, and make your fortune.'"
"But vere's your money, my dear?"
"Wait a minute. 'What's the salary?' said I. 'A thousand a-year,' says he. 'You don't mean it?' says I again. 'Upon my soul,' says he. 'And what will it cost?' says I. 'The first year's salary,' says he; 'and I'll advance it, because I know you are a gentleman, and will not forget to pay me back.' 'If I do,' says I, 'I wish I may die.' Now, father, that there letter, as you sees, is official, and that's why he doesn't say 'dear Moses;' but if you was to see us together, it would do your heart good. Not that you ever will, because your unfortinate lowness of character will compel me, as a gent, to cut your desirable acquaintance the moment I steps into Lord Downy's Wellingtons. Now, if you have got no more fish in that 'ere cupboard, I wish you good morning."
"Shtay, shtay, Aby, you're in such a devil of a hurry!" exclaimed Methusaleh, holding him by the wrist. "Now, my dear boy, if you're dead to natur, there's an end of the matter, and I've nothing more to say; but if you've any real blood left in you, you von't break my heart. Vy shouldn't your father have the pleasure of advancing the money? If it is a true bill, Aby, you sha'n't be under no obligation to nobody!"
"True bill! I like that! Why, I have seen Lord Downy's own hand-*writing; and, what's more, seen him in the House of Lords, talking quite as familiarly, as I conwerse with you, with the Lord Chancellor, and all the rest on 'em. I heard him make a speech – next morning I looks into the paper – no deceit, sir – there was Lord Downy's name. Now, to-morrow, when I'm introduced to him, don't you think I shall be able to diskiver whether he's the same man or not?"
"Vere's the tousand pound?" inquired Mr Methusaleh.
"My friend goes with me to-morrow to hand it over. Three hundred is to be given up at Lord Downy's hotel in Oxford Street, and the balance at Mr Fitzalbert's chambers in Westminster, an hour afterwards, when I receive the appointment."
"My dear Aby, I von't beat about the bush with you. I'm quite sure, my child, ve should make it answer much better, if you'd let your father advance the money. Doesn't it go agin the grain to vurk into the hands of Christians against your own flesh and blood? If this Mr Fitzalbert advances the money, depend upon it it's to make someting handsome by the pargain. Let me go vith you to his lordship, and perhaps, if he's very hard-up, he'll take seven hundred instead of the thousand. Ve'll divide the three hundred between us. Don't you believe that your friend is doing all this for love. Vot can he see, my darling, in your pretty face, to take all this trouble for nothing? I shouldn't be at all surprised if he's a blackguard, and means to take a cruel advantage of his lordship's sitivation – give him perhaps only five hundred for his tousand. Aby, let your ould father do an act of charity, and put two hundred pounds into this poor gentleman's pockets."
Before Aby could reply to this benevolent appeal, a stop was put to the interesting conversation, by a violent knocking at the door, on the part of no less a gentleman than Warren de Fitzalbert himself.
Chapter II
Whilst the domestic tête-à-tête, feebly described in the foregoing chapter, was in progress, the nobleman, more than once referred to, was passing miserable moments in his temporary lodgings at the Salisbury Hotel, in Oxford Street. A more unhappy gentleman than Baron Downy it would be impossible to find in or out of England. The inheritor of a cruelly-burdened title, he had spent a life in adding to its incumbrances, rather than in seeking to disentangle it from the meshes in which it had been transmitted to him. In the freest country on the globe, he had never known the bliss of liberty. He had moved about with a drag-chain upon his spiritual and physical energies, as long as he could remember his being. At school and at college, necessarily limited in his allowance, he contracted engagements which followed him for at least ten years after his entrance into life, and then only quitted him to leave him bound to others far more tremendous and inextricable. His most frequent visitors, his most constant friends, his most familiar acquaintance, were money-lenders. He had borrowed money upon all possible and unimaginable securities, from the life of his grandmother down to that last resource of the needy gentleman, the family repeater, chain, and appendages. His lordship, desperate as his position was, was a man of breeding, a nobleman in thought and feeling. But the more incapable of doing wrong, so much the more liable to deceit and fraud. He had been passed, so to speak, from hand to hand by all the representatives of the various money-lending classes that thrive in London on the folly and necessity of the reckless and the needy. All had now given him up. His name had an odour in the market, where his paper was a drug. His bills of a hundred found few purchasers at a paltry five pounds, and were positively rejected by all but wine-merchant-sheriff's officers, who took them at nothing, and contrived to make a handsome profit out of them into the bargain. Few had so little reason to be proud as the man whose name had become a by-word and a joke amongst the most detestable and degraded of their race; and yet, strange as it may seem, few had a keener sense of their position, or could be so readily stung by insult, let it but proceed from a quarter towards which punishment might be directed with credit or honour. A hundred times Lord Downy had cursed his fate, which had not made him an able-bodied porter, or an independent labourer in the fields, rather than that saddest of all sad contradictions, a nobleman without the means of sustaining nobility – a man of rank with no dignity – a superior without the shadow of pre-eminence; but for all the wealth of the kingdom, he would not have sullied the order to which he belonged, by what he conceived to be one act of meanness or sordid selfishness; as if there could be any thing foul or base in any act that seeks, by honourable industry, to repair the errors of a wayward fortune.
Upon the day of which we speak, there sat with Lord Downy a rude, ill-favoured man, brought into juxtaposition with the peer by the unfortunate relation that connected the latter with so many men of similar stamp and station. He seemed more at home in the apartment than the owner, and took some pains to over-act his part of vulgar independence. He had never been so intimate with a nobleman before – certainly no nobleman had ever been in his power until now. The low and abject mind holds its jubilee when it fancies that it reduces superiority to its own level, and can trample upon it for an hour without fear of rebuke or opposition.
"For the love of heaven! Mr Ireton, if for no kindness towards me," said Lord Downy, "give me one day longer to redeem those sacred pledges. They are heirlooms – gifts of my poor dear mother. I had no right to place them in your hands – they belong to my child."
"Then why did you? I never asked you; I could have turned my money twenty times over since you have had it. I dare say you think I have made a fortune out of you."
"I have always paid you liberally – and given you your terms."
"I thought so – it's always the way. The more you do for great people the more you may. I might have taken the bed from under your lordship many a time, if so I had been so disposed; but of course you have forgotten all about that."
"About these jewels, Mr Ireton. They are not of great value, and cannot be worth your selling. I shall receive two hundred and fifty pounds to-morrow – it shall be made three hundred, and you shall have the whole sum on account. Surely four-and-twenty hours are not to make you break your faith with me?"
"As for breaking faith, Lord Downy, I should like to know what you'd do if I were in your place and you in mine."
"I hope" —
"Oh, yes! it's easy enough to talk now, when you aint in my position; but I know very well how you all grind down the poor fellows that are in your power – how you make them slave on five shillings a-week, to keep you in luxury, and all the rest of it. Not that I blame you. I know it's human nature to get what one can out of every body, and I don't complain to see men try it on."
"I have nothing more to say, Mr Ireton. You must do with me as you think proper."
"I am to wait till to-morrow, you say?"
"Yes; only until to-morrow. I shall surely be in receipt of money then."
"Oh, sure of course!" said Mr Ireton. "You gentlemen are always sure till the time comes, and then you can't make it out how it is you are disappointed. No sort of experience conquers your spirits; but the more your hopes are defeated, the more sanguine you get. I'll wait till to-morrow then" —
"A thousand thanks."
"Wait a bit – on certain terms. You know as well as I do, that I could put you to no end of expense. I don't wish to do it; but I don't prefer to be out of pocket by the matter. I must have ten pounds for the accommodation."
"Ten!" exclaimed poor Lord Downy.
"Yes, only ten; and I'll give you twenty if you'll pay me at once;" added Mr Ireton – knowing very well that his victim could as easily have paid off the national debt.
Lord Downy sighed.
"There's a slip of paper before you. Give me your I O U for the trifle, and pay principal and interest to-morrow."
His lordship turned obediently to the table, wrote in silence the acknowledgment required, and with a hand that trembled from vexation and anxiety, presented the document to his tormentor. The latter vanished. He had scarcely departed before Lord Downy rang his bell with violence, and a servant entered.
"Are there any letters for me, Mason?" inquired his lordship eagerly.
"None, my lord," answered Mason with some condescension, and a great deal of sternness.
Lord Downy bit his lip, and paced the room uneasily.
"My lord," said Mason, "I beg your" —
"Nothing more, nothing more;" replied the master, interrupting him. "Should any letters arrive, let them be brought to me immediately."
"Beg your pardon, my lord," said Mason, taking no notice of the order, "the place doesn't suit me."
"How?"
"Nothing to complain of, my lord – only wish to get into a good family."
"Sirrah!"
"It isn't the kind of thing, my lord," continued Mason, growing bolder, "that I have been used to. I brought a character with me, and I want to take it away again. I'm talked about already."
"What does the fellow mean?"
"I don't wish to hurt your lordship's feelings, and I'd rather not be more particular. If it gets blown in the higher circles that I have been here, my character, my lord, is smashed."
"You may go, sir, when your month has expired."
"I'd rather go at once, my lord, if it's all the same to you. As for the salary, my lord, it's quite at your service – quite. I never was a grasping man; and in your lordship's unfortunate situation," – Lord Downy walked to the window, flung it open, and commenced whistling a tune – "I should know better than to take advantage," proceeded Mr Mason. "There is a young man, my lord, a friend of mine, just entering life, without any character at all, who would be happy, I have no doubt, to undertake" —
Lord Downy banged the window, and turned upon the flunky with an expression of rage that might have put a violent and ever-to-be-lamented stop to this true history, had not the door of his lordship's apartment opened, and boots presented himself with the announcement of "Mr Warren de Fitzalbert."