Baron Edward Bulwer Lytton Lytton

“ Squills has just discovered that I have no bump of cautiousness; so that, craniologically speaking, if I had escaped one imprudence, I should certainly have run my head against another."
"A man with your development is made to be taken in," said Mr. Squills, consolingly.
"Do you hear that, my own Kitty? And have you the heart to blame Jack any longer,—a poor creature cursed with a bump that would take in the Stock Exchange? And can any one resist his bump, Squills?" ”

“ Squills set his foot significantly upon mine.
"But," resumed my father, mildly, "though I thank you very much, Squills, for your kind offer, I do not recognize the necessity of accepting it. I am not so bad a philosopher as you seem to imagine; and the blow I have received has not so deranged my physical organization as to render me unfit to transact my affairs."
"Hum!" grunted Squills, starting up and seizing my father's pulse; "ninety-six,—ninety-six if a beat! And the tongue, sir!" ”

“ Metaphor apart, the capitalists buttoned up their pockets, and would have nothing to say to their namesake.
Not a word of this change, so abhorrent to all the notions of poor Augustine Caxton, had been breathed to him by Peck or Tibbets. He ate and slept and worked at the Great Book, occasionally wondering why he had not heard of the advent of the "Literary Times," unconscious of all the awful responsibilities which "The Capitalist" was entailing on him, knowing no more of "The Capitalist" than he did of the last loan of the Rothschilds. ”

“ Squills, triumphantly. "Do you know, Mr. Caxton, that while you are looking so calm, and talking so quietly,—just on purpose to sustain your son and delude your wife,—do you know that your pulse, which is naturally little more than sixty, is nearly a hundred? Do you know, sir, that your mucous membranes are in a state of high irritation, apparent by the papillce at the tip of your tongue? And if, with a pulse like this and a tongue like that, you think of settling money matters with a set of sharp-witted tradesmen, all I can say is, that you are a ruined man." ”

“ With his light reading, his rich stores of anecdote, his good-humored knowledge of the drawing-room world, he had scarce a word that would fit into the great, rough, serious matters which Lord Castleton threw upon the table as he nibbled his toast. Nothing but the most grave and practical subjects of human interest seemed to attract this future leader of mankind. The fact is that Lord Castleton had been taught everything that relates to property, —a knowledge which embraces a very wide circumference. ”

“ Peck and Mr. Tibbets began to concentrate their luminous notions into that brilliant and comet-like apparition which ultimately blazed forth under the title of "The Capitalist."
From this change of enterprise the more prudent and responsible of the original shareholders had altogether withdrawn. A majority, indeed, were left; but the greater part of those were shareholders of that kind most amenable to the influences of Uncle Jack, and willing to be shareholders in anything, since as yet they were possessors of nothing. ”

“ It is extraordinary to me," continued Sir Sedley, benevolently going on, that I might have full time to recover myself, "how contagious that disease called 'business' is in our foggy England! Not only Trevanion, you see, has the complaint in its very worst and most complicated form, but that poor dear cousin of mine who is so young [here Sir Sedley sighed] , and might enjoy himself so much, is worse than you were when Trevanion was fagging you to death. But, to be sure, a great name and position, like Castleton's, must be a very heavy affliction to a conscientious mind. ”

“ You will be puzzled, bubbled, ridiculed, duped every day of your life if you do not make yourself acquainted with all by which property is assailed or defended, impoverished or increased. You have a vast stake in the country, you must learn all the interests of Europe,—nay, of the civilized world; for those interests react on the country, and the interests of the country are of the greatest possible consequence to the interests of the Marquis of Castleton. ”

“ Do you ever see a man in any society sitting mute for hours, and not feel an uneasy curiosity to penetrate the wall he thus builds up between others and himself? Does he not interest you far more than the brilliant talker at your left, the airy wit at your right whose shafts fall in vain on the sullen barrier of the silent man! ”

“ That is the place for a man who has no home in the Babel, and whose hand is ever pressing to his heart, with its dull, burning pain.
Mr. Squills decoyed me the second evening into one of the small theatres; and very heartily did Mr. Squills enjoy all he saw and all he heard. And while, with a convulsive effort of the jaws, I was trying to laugh too, suddenly in one of the actors, who was performing the worshipful part of a parish beadle, I recognized a face that I had seen before. ”

“ Of a man less elevated in rank one would certainly have said, "Cleverish, but a prig;" but there really was something so respectable in a personage born to such fortunes, and having nothing to do but to bask in the sunshine, voluntarily taking such pains with himself and condescending to identify his own interests—the interests of the Castleton property—with the concerns of his lesser fellow-mortals that one felt the young marquis had in him the stuff to become a very considerable man. ”

“ It is quite clear that a man has no possession in posterity. Posterity may possess him; but deuce a bit will he ever be the better for his great great-grandchildren!"
Squills.—"Hear, hear!"
Pisistratus (warming) .—"But a man's ancestry is a positive property to him. How much, not only of acres, but of his constitution, his temper, his conduct, character, and nature, he may inherit from some progenitor ten times removed! Nay, without that progenitor would he ever have been born,—would a Squills ever have introduced him into the world, or a nurse ever have carried him upo kolpo!" ”

“ This settled to our universal satisfaction, I went to pay my farewell visit to Sir Sedley Beaudesert. He had made much of me during my stay in London. I had breakfasted and dined with him pretty often; I had presented Squills to him, who no sooner set eyes upon that splendid conformation than he described his character with the nicest accuracy, as the necessary consequence of such a development for the rosy pleasures of life. We had never once retouched on the subject of Fanny's marriage, and both of us tacitly avoided even mentioning the Trevanions. ”

“ But is not silence as good a cloak as sleep; does it not wrap a man round with as offusc and impervious a fold? Silence, what a world it covers,— what busy schemes, what bright hopes and dark fears, what ambition, or what despair! ”

“ Assured of my father's responsibility, the adventurous Peck put plenty of spirit into the first launch of "The Capitalist." All the walls were placarded with its announcements; circular advertisements ran from one end of the kingdom to the other. Agents were engaged, correspondents levied en masse. The invasion of Xerxes on the Greeks was not more munificently provided for than that of "The Capitalist" upon the credulity and avarice of mankind. ”

“ The 'Anti-Capitalist'!—what an idea! Address the whole reading world, there, sir: everybody hates the capitalist—everybody would have his neighbor's money. The 'Anti-Capitalist'!—sir, we should have gone off, in the manufacturing towns, like wildfire. But what could I do?—"
"John Tibbets," said my father, solemnly, "Capitalist 'or' Anti- Capitalist,' thou hadst a right to follow thine own bent in either,—but always provided it had been with thine own money. Thou seest not the thing, John Tibbets, in the right point of view ”

“ But as Providence bestows upon fishes the instrument of fins, whereby they balance and direct their movements, however rapid and erratic, through the pathless deeps, so to the cold-blooded creatures of our own species—that may be classed under the genus Money-Makers—the same protective power accords the fin-like properties of prudence and caution, wherewith your true money-getter buoys and guides himself majestically through the great seas of speculation. ”

“ Uncle Jack.
Uncle Jack turned to the fire, and warmed first one foot, then the other. This comfortable ceremony performed, he again faced the company, and resumed, musingly, and as if answering some imaginary observations,—
"Yes, yes, you are right there; and a deuced unlucky speculation it proved too. But I was overruled by that fellow Peck. Says I to him, says I, "Capitalist"!—pshaw! no popular interest there; it don't address the great public! Very confined class the capitalists, better throw ourselves boldly on the people. Yes,' said I, 'call it the "Anti- Capitalist."' By Jove! ”

“ Why, you foolish young man, don't you see that with his ignorance of business where he himself is concerned,—though for any other one's business, neither Rollick nor Cool has a better judgment,— and with his d—d Quixotic spirit of honor worked up into a state of excitement, he would have rushed to Mr. Tibbets and exclaimed, "How much do we owe you? There it is' settled in the same way with these printers, and come back without a sixpence; whereas you and I can look coolly about us and reduce the inflammation to the minimum!"
"I see, and thank you heartily, Squills." ”

“ Squills.—"Hear, hear!"
Pisistratus (with dignified emotion) .—"No man, therefore, has a right to rob another of a forefather, with a stroke of his pen, from any motive, howsoever amiable. In the present instance you will say, perhaps, that the ancestor in question is apocryphal,—it may be the printer, it may be the knight. ”

“ Frankly, then, I suspect this is a bad business. I know little about newspapers, except that I have to subscribe to one in my county, which costs me a small income; but I know that a London daily paper might ruin a man in a few weeks. And as for shareholders, my dear Caxton, I was once teased into being a shareholder in a canal that ran through my property, and ultimately ran off with L30,000 of it! The other shareholders were all drowned in the canal, like Pharaoh and his host in the Red Sea. But your father is a great scholar, and must not be plagued with such matters. ”

“ Even Augustus Caesar, though certainly he had never scrupled to make as many ghosts as suited his convenience, did not like the chance of a visit from them, and never sat alone in tenebris. What the amount of the sums claimed from me may be, we know not; what may be gained from the other shareholders is equally obscure and undefined. But the first thing to do is to get poor Jack out of prison."
"Uncle Jack out of prison!" ”

“ Caxton,—a tongue, ma'am, so bright that you could see to read by it!"
"Oh! Austin, Austin!"
"My dear, it is not my tongue that is in fault, I assure you," said my father, speaking through his teeth; "and the man knows no more of my tongue than he does of the Mysteries of Eleusis."
"Put it out then," exclaimed Squills; "and if it be not as I say, you have my leave to go to London and throw your whole fortune into the two great pits you have dug for it. Put it out!"
"Mr. Squills!" said my father, coloring,—"Mr. Squills, for shame!"
"Dear, dear, Austin! your hand is so hot ”

“ Caxton himself might settle as he could with the other shareholders, most of whom, he grieved to add, he had been misled by Mr. Tibbets into believing to be men of substance, when in reality they were men of straw! ”

“ If you are not the most obstinate, hard-hearted, unfeeling brute in the world,—which I don't take you to be,—brother Austin, after that really beautiful speech of your wife's, there is not a word to be said further. ”

“ My uncle retreated quite into the corner and drew the dumb-waiter after him, so as to establish a complete fortification. Mr. Squills seized the pen that Roland had thrown down, and began mending it furiously,—that is, cutting it into slivers,—thereby denoting, symbolically, how he would like to do with Uncle Jack, could he once get him safe and snug under his manipular operations. ”

“ Women always exaggerate, and make realities of their own bugbears: it is the vice of their lively imaginations, as Wierus has clearly shown in accounting for the marks, moles, and hare-lips which they inflict upon their innocent infants before they are even born. ”

“ PART XI. CHAPTER I. The next day, on the outside of the "Cambridge Telegraph," there was one passenger who ought to have impressed his fellow-travellers with a very respectful idea of his lore in the dead languages; for not a single syllable, in a live one, did he vouchsafe to utter from the moment he ascended that "bad eminence" to the moment in which he regained his mother earth. "Sleep," says honest Sancho, "covers a man better than a cloak." I am ashamed of thee, honest Sancho, thou art a sad plagiarist ”

“ Well, after all, I admire him and respect his tutor: a soil naturally very thin, I suspect, has been most carefully cultivated; and Castleton, with Trevanion's help, will be the first man in the peerage,—prime minister some day, I dare say. ”

“ Why, he has got a broad-shouldered, stooping fellow, in spectacles and cotton stockings, who has written upon 'Rent,' I believe,—an imaginative treatise in his case, I fear, for rent is a thing he could never have received, and not often been trusted to pay. ”

“ Pike's office, with a little note of introduction from Sir Sedley. I found Mr. Pike exactly the man I had anticipated from Trevanion's character,—short, quick, intelligent, in question and answer; imposing and somewhat domineering in manner; not overcrowded with business, but with enough for experience and respectability; neither young nor old; neither a pedantic machine of parchment, nor a jaunty off-hand coxcomb of West End manners.
"It is an ugly affair," said he, "but one that requires management. Leave it all in my hands for three days. Don't go near Mr. Tibbets nor Mr. Peck ”