CHAPTER XXI
The Comic side of the Railway Mania—“Jeames’s Diary,” &c.—Universal Speculation as shown by Parliamentary Return—Rise of Discount—Collapse—Shareholders not forthcoming—Widespread Ruin—George Hudson.
Not particularly exaggerated is “Railroad Speculator” in Punch (Vol. viii., p. 244):
“The night was stormy and dark, the town was shut up in sleep: Only those were abroad who were out on the lark, Or those who’d no beds to keep.
I passed through the lonely street, The wind did sing and blow; I could hear the policeman’s feet, Clapping to and fro.
There stood a potato man, in the midst of all the wet; He stood with his ‘tato can, in the lonely Haymarket.
Two gents of dismal mien, and dank and greasy rags; came out of a shop for gin, swaggering over the flags:
Swaggering over the stones, these shabby bucks did walk; and I went and followed those seedy ones, and listened to their talk.
Was I sober or awake? Could I believe my ears? Those dismal beggars spake of nothing but Railroad Shares.
I wondered more and more: Says one, ‘Good friend of mine, how many shares did you write for? In the Diddlesex Junction line?’
‘I wrote for twenty,’ says Jim, ‘but they wouldn’t give me one’; His comrade straight rebuked him, for the folly he had done.
‘Oh Jim, you are unawares of the ways of this bad town: I always write for five hundred shares, and then they put me down.’
‘And yet you got no shares,’ says Jim, ‘for all your boast’: ‘I would have wrote,’ says Jack, ‘but where was the penny to pay the post?’
‘I lost, for I couldn’t pay that first instalment up; but here’s ‘taters smoking hot—I say, Let’s stop, my boy, and sup.’
And, at this simple feast, the while they did regale, I drew each ragged capitalist, down on my left thumb nail.
Their talk did me perplex, All night I tumbled and tost; and thought of railroad specs, and how money was won and lost.
‘Bless railroads everywhere,’ I said, ‘and the world’s advance; Bless every railroad share in Italy, Ireland, France; for never a beggar need now despair, and every rogue has a chance.’”
But, should anyone wish to watch the progress of the Railway Mania, I would recommend a perusal of Punch, Vol. ix., in which appears, inter alia, Jeames’s Diary, by Thackeray, afterwards published as The Diary of C. Jeames De la Pluche, Esq. The idea was started on p. 59, under the heading of—