CHAPTER XXXVIII. MR. DAVENPORT DUNN IN MORE MOODS THAN ONE
Although Mr. Hankes performs no very conspicuous part in our story, he makes his appearance at the Hermitage with a degree of pomp and circumstance which demand mention. With our reader's kind leave, therefore, we mean to devote a very brief chapter to that gentleman and his visit.
As in great theatres there is a class of persons to whose peculiar skill and ability are confided all the details of “spectacle,” all those grand effects of panoramic splendor which in a measure make the action of the drama subordinate to the charms of what, more properly, ought to be mere accessories; so modern speculation has called to its aid its own special machinists and decorators,—a gifted order of men, capable of surrounding the dryest and least promising of enterprises with all the pictorial attractions and attractive graces of the “ballet”
If it be a question of a harbor or dock company, the prospectus is headed with a colored print, wherein tall three-deckers mingle with close-reefed cutters, their gay buntings fluttering in the breeze as the light waves dance around the bows; from the sea beneath to the clouds above, all is motion and activity,—meet emblems of the busy shore where commerce lives and thrives. If it be a building speculation, the architecture is but the background of a brilliant “mall,” where splendid equipages and caracoling riders figure, with gay parasols and sleek poodles intermixed.
One “buys in” to these stocks with feelings far above “five percent.” A sense of the happiness diffused amongst thousands of our fellow-creatures—the “blessings of civilization,” as we like to call the extension of cotton prints—cheer and animate us; and while laying out our money advantageously, we are crediting our hearts with a large balance on the score of philanthropy. To foster this commendable tendency, to feed the tastes of those who love, so to say, to “shoot at Fortune with both barrels,” an order of men arose, cunning in all the devices of advertisement, learned in the skill of capitals, and adroit in illustrations.
Of these was Mr. Hankes. Originally brought up at the feet of George Robins, he was imported into Ireland by Mr. Davenport Dunn as his chief man at business,—the Grand Vizier of Joint Stock Companies and all industrial speculations.
If Dr. Pangloss was a good man for knowing what wickedness was, Mr. Hankes might equally pretend to skill in all enterprises, since he had experienced, for a number of years, every species of failure and defeat The description of his residences would fill half a column of a newspaper. They ranged from Brompton to Boulogne, and took in everything from Wilton Crescent to St John's Wood. He had done a little of everything, too, from “Chief Commissioner to the Isthmus”—we never heard of what isthmus—to Parliamentary Agent for the friends of Jewish emancipation. With a quickness that rarely deceived him, Dunn saw his capabilities. He regarded him as fighting fortune so bravely with all the odds against him, that he ventured to calculate what such a man might be, if favorably placed in the world. The fellow who could bring down his bird with a battered old flint musket might reasonably enough distinguish himself if armed with an Enfield rifle. The venture was not, however, entirely successful; for though Hankes proved himself a very clever fellow, he was only really great under difficulties. It was with the crash of falling fortunes around him—amidst debt, bankruptcy, executions, writs, and arrests—Hankes rose above his fellows, and displayed all the varied resources of his fertile genius. The Spartan vigor of his mind assorted but badly with prosperity, and Hankes waxed fat and indolent, affected gorgeous waistcoats and chains, and imperceptibly sank down to the level of those decorative arts we have just alluded to.
The change was curious: it was as though Gerard or Gordon Cumming should have given up lion-hunting and taken to teach piping bullfinches!
Every venture of Davenport Dunn was prosperous. All his argosies were borne on favoring winds, and Hankes saw his great defensive armor hung up to rust and to rot. Driven in some measure, therefore, to cut out his path in life, he invented that grand and gorgeous school of enterprise whose rashness and splendor crush into insignificance all the puny attempts of commonplace speculators. He only talked millions; thousands he ignored. He would accept of no names on the direction of his schemes save the very highest in rank. If he crossed the Channel, his haste required a special steamer. If he went by rail, a special train awaited him. The ordinary world, moving along at its tortoise pace, was shocked at the meteor course that every now and then shot across the hemisphere, and felt humiliated in their own hearts by the comparison.