Chapter Twenty Six.
A Piece of Assurance.
Being only a quiet, country-bumpkin sort of personage, it seems but reasonable that I should ask what can there be in me that people should take such intense interest in my life being insured. If such eagerness were shown by, say one’s wife, or any very near relative, one might turn suspicious, and fancy they had leanings towards the tea-spoons, sugar-tongs, and silver watch, and any other personal property that, like Captain Cuttle, one might feel disposed to make over “jintly” in some other direction. Consequently, one would be afterwards on the look-out for modern Borgiaism, and take homoeopathic doses of Veratria, Brucine, etc, etc, by way of antidote for any unpleasant symptoms likely to manifest themselves in the system. But then it is not from near relatives that such earnestness proceeds, but from utter strangers. It is hard to say how many attempts I have had made upon my life insurance—I will not use the word assurance, though it exists to a dreadful extent in the myrmidons of the pushing offices—at home, abroad, in the retirement of one’s study, in the lecture-hall of a town, always the same.
Fancy being inveigled into attending a lecture, and sitting for an hour and a half while a huge, big-whiskered man verbally attacks you, seizes you with his eye, metaphorically hooks you with his finger, and then holds you up to the scorn of the assembled hundreds, while he reproaches you for your neglect of the dear ones at home; calls up horrors to make you nervous; relates anecdotes full of widows in shabby mourning; ragged children and hard-hearted landlords; cold relations, bitter sufferings, and misery unspeakable; all of which troubles, calamities, and cares, will be sure to fall upon those you leave behind, if you do not immediately insure in the Certain Dissolution and Inevitable Collapse Assurance Company, world-famed for its prompt and liberal settlement, and the grand bonuses it gives to its supporters.
I have nerves, and consequently did not want to know exactly how many people leave this world per cent, per annum. I dislike statistics of every kind, and never felt disposed to serve tables since I was kept in at school to learn them. I did not want to be sent home to dream of a dreadful dance of death funereally performed by undertakers’ men in scarfs, with brass-tipped staves and bunches of black ostrich-plumes in their hands. We do certainly read of people who prepare their own mausoleums, and who, doubtless, take great comfort and delight in the contemplation of their future earthly abode; but to a man without any such proclivities this style of lecture—this metaphorical holding of one’s head by force over the big black pit, was jarring and dreadfully discordant in its effect upon the resonant strings of the human instrument.
I have very strange ways and ideas of my own, and have no hesitation in saying that I like to do as I please, and as seems me best. If what seems to me best is wrong, of course I do not own to it. Who does? and if I prefer insuring my furniture and house to my life, and this system is wrong, I’m not going to be convinced of its wrongness by a tall, gentlemanly-looking man who wishes to see me on particular business, and whom I have shown into the room I call my study, but which should be termed workshop.
Now, just at the time of the said tall, gentlemanly man’s arrival, I am in the agony of composition; I have written nearly half of a paper for a magazine, one which the editor will be as sure to reject as I in my then state of inflation think he will hug it to his breast as a gem. I am laboriously climbing the climax, and find the ascent so slippery, and the glides back so frequent, that the question arises in one’s breast whether, like the Irish schoolboy, it would not be better to try backwards. I have just come to where the awe-stricken Count exclaims—
“Please sir, you’re wanted,” says Mary, opening the door upon her repeated knocks gaining no attention; and then, after an angry parley, I am caught—regularly limed, trapped, netted by the words “particular business.”
A tall gentlemanly man wanting to see me on particular business. What can it be? Perhaps it is to edit The Times; perhaps to send Dr Russell home, after taking his pencil and note-book out of his war-correspondent hands; or maybe to put out the GAS of the Daily Telegraph. Is it to elevate the Standard, distribute the Daily News, act as astronomer-royal to the Morning and Evening Stars, to roll the Globe, or be its Atlas, take the spots from the face of the Sun, blow the great trumpet of the Morning Herald, literary field-marshal in some review, rebuild some damaged or exploded magazine? What can the business be? Not stage business, certainly, for that is not my branch. Law? perhaps so. A legacy—large, of course, or one of the principals would not have come down instead of writing. It must be so: I am next of kin to somebody, and I shall buy that estate after all.
Enter tall gentlemanly man upon his particular business of a private nature; and then, being a quiet, retiring person, to whom it is painful to speak rudely or without that glaze which is commonly called politeness, I suffer a severe cross-examination as to age, wife’s ditto, number of children, and so on. I am told of the uncertainty of life—the liability of the thread to snap, without the aid of the scissors of Atropos—how strengthening the knowledge of having made provision for my ewe and lambs would be if I were ill; how small the amount would be; how large a bonus would be added if I assured at once; how mine would be sure to be a first-class life—he had not seen the phials and pill-boxes in the bedroom cupboard—how nothing should be put off until to-morrow which could be done to-day, which I already knew; how a friend of his had written twelve reasons why people should assure, which reasons he kindly showed to me; and told me an abundance of things which he said I ought to know. He had answer pat for every possible or impossible objection that I could make, having thoroughly crammed himself for his task; and he knocked me down, bowled me over, got me up in corners, over the ropes, in Chancery, fell upon me heavily; in fact, as the professors of the “noble art” would say—the noble art of self-defence and offence to the world—had it all his own way.
I had no idea what a poor debater I was, or that I could be so severely handled. My ignorance was surprising; and I should have been melancholy afterwards instead of angry, if I had not consoled myself with the idea that I was not in training for a life assurance fight.
I recalled the answer made by a friend to a strong appeal from a class office, and that was, that he was neither a medical nor a general, and therefore not eligible; at the same time holding the door open for his visitor’s exit. But then I did not feel myself equal to such a task, and however importunate and troublesome a visitor might be, I somehow felt constrained to treat him in a gentlemanly manner. I tried all the gentle hints I could, and then used more forcible ones; but the gentlemanly man seemed cased in armour of proof, from which my feeble shafts glanced and went anywhere; while, whenever he saw that I was about to make a fresh attack, he was at me like Mr Branestrong, QC, and beat down my guard in a moment. It took a long time to eradicate the bland, but it went at last, and a faint flush seemed to make its way into my face, while to proceed to extremities, there was a peculiar nervous twitching in one toe, originating in its debility caused by a table once falling upon it, but now the twitches seemed of a growing or expanding nature, and as if they were struggling hard to become kicks. It was pain unutterable, especially when the moral law asserted its rights, and an aspect of suavity was ruled by reason to be the order of the day—if allied with firmness.
“If allied with firmness.” Ah! but there was the rub, for firmness had turned craven and vanished at the first appearance of my visitor.
“No; I would rather not assure then; I would think it over; I would make up my mind shortly; I felt undecided as to the office I should choose,” were my replies, et hoc genus omne; but all was of no avail, and at last I acknowledged to myself that I could not hold my own, and must speak very strongly to get rid of my unwelcome friend, who solved my problem himself by asking whether I admired poetry.
Presuming that this was to change the conversation, preparatory to taking his leave, I replied, “Yes.”
“Then he would read me a short poem on the subject in question,” and drawing from his pocket a piece of paper, he began in a most forced declamatory style to read some doggerel concerning a gentleman who was taken to heaven, but who left a wife and seven—rhyme to heaven—and whose affairs would have been most unsatisfactory if he had not assured his life.
But my friend did not finish, being apparently startled by some look or movement upon my part, which caused him to hurriedly say “Good morning,” and to promise to call again, as I seemed busy.
Perhaps he may call again; but he will have to call again, and again, and again, and very loudly too, before he gets in to talk upon particular business.
Now, it may seem strange that after this I should express great admiration for the system of assurance; but I do admire it, and consider it the duty of every poor man to try and make some provision for the future of those he may leave behind. But one cannot help feeling suspicious of offices that are in the habit of forcing themselves so unpleasantly upon your notice, and sinking their professional respectability in the dodges and advertising and canvassing tricks of the cheap “to be continued in monthly parts” book-hawker, or the broken down tradesman, who leaves goods for your inspection. One has learned to look upon the quiet, flowing stream as the deepest and safest to bear the bark; for the rough, bubbling water speaks of shoals, rocks, and quicksands, with perchance “snags and sawyers,” ready to pierce the frail bottom.
Once more alone, I referred to the circular left upon my table, where beneath my age and the sum per cent, that I should have to pay, was a broad pencil-mark, emanating from the eminently gentlemanly gold pencil-case of my visitor. But in spite of unheard-of advantages, liberal treatment, large bonus distribution every five years, with a great deal more duly set forth in the paper, I shall not assure in that office, for I made my mind up then in the half-hour of anger, when I could not get the Count to exclaim anything, although I tried so hard. He was awe-stricken, certainly; but as I had painted him, he would keep changing into a gentlemanly man, charged with life assurance principles. So I read what I had written, saw the error of my ways, and knowing too well that a certain conductor would reject it after the first page, I sighed, tore off a portion, and used it to illumine a cigar; and then took for my hero the morning’s visitor—writing this paper, which I trust may have a better fate.