My daughter Ann was born Novr ye 12th, 1709, & Dyed ye 19th Ditto.
After this the regular accounts stop, as does also the Diary, but from stray notes scattered through the book there would appear to have been born yet another daughter who survived infancy, but whose health must have given cause for anxiety. Thus in February 1716, we read: 'Pd Nurse Patch fifteen Pounds twelve shillings in full for nursing and boarding my Daughter to the 20th of this Instant February.' And again, in February 1720, the child and nurse were evidently sent on a long visit to Huntingdon to Grandmother Payne: 'Pd Mother Febry ye 16th, 1720/1, Thirty seaven Pounds fourteen shillings & 6d. in full for Butter, Interest, Child, and Maide's board and wages and all accts.'
After November 1709 there are no more regular house-accounts, and the little book is used principally for jotting down moneys received and larger sums paid out to his mother and sisters. The shop also ceases to be mentioned, and we have numerous entries of rents paid by tenants in Huntingdon;—indeed it would seem that soon after the death of his wife's father, which occurred in June 1709, John Payne left London and went down to manage his estates in Huntingdon, where he seems to have been in possession of about £1000 per annum in landed property, chiefly consisting of small farms let to tenants at from £20 to £50 per annum. Out of this property, however, he has to pay quarterly dividends to his mother and sister Anna, though their income, like that of most widows and unmarried daughters of the time, was very small and could form no great burden on the estate. At what period John Payne again left his country house to mix once more in London business life, whether he was personally connected with the bank or only lent his money and his name, or whether indeed he ever was one of the founders or left that honour to his son John, is all a matter of conjecture; yet one closes the quaint little old book with feelings of regret, and would fain follow its owner a little further. The last date is 1726, when he must still have been a comparatively young man.
The publication of this little article had the pleasant result of enabling the writer to restore the Pocket-Book to a descendant of the original owner. Further notes on some of the persons mentioned will be found in a 'Sequel' contributed by Mr. John Orlebar Payne to the next number (that for April 1889) of 'Longman's Magazine.'
[WHY MEN DON'T MARRY][30]
AN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY ANSWER
(By Alice Pollard)
The title of this article is not of my own choosing. It was fore-ordained for me some time back by the rather excited correspondents of a daily newspaper, which opened its columns to as many solutions of the riddle as ingenuity could devise. It may fairly be objected that the riddle is no riddle at all, but rather belongs to the class of question-begging queries of which 'How long have you ceased beating your mother?' is the most famous example. As a matter of fact, most men do marry, and it seems, therefore, unreasonable to be asked to explain why they don't. But on this one point my sex is perhaps a little unreasonable. Women have never acquiesced wholeheartedly in Mr. Stevenson's assertion that though the ideal woman is a wife the ideal man is a bachelor, and so long as even a small minority of men of presentable appearance and some visible means of subsistence persist in denying themselves a man's highest privilege, the problem will doubtless continue to be stated in the sweeping form which I here adopt.
The most hardened offenders are undoubtedly the members of a single class: pleasant young fellows, with an income of three or four hundred a year and no prospect of increasing it. A bachelor with £400 a year, if he live within it, persists in regarding himself as a miracle of economy, but with even the smallest gift of husbandry is probably as rich as any man in the kingdom. To marry on the same £400 means a terrible falling-off in the standard of comfort, and the one luxury which these pleasant fellows religiously deny themselves is that of a wife.