A man made of money

by Douglas William Jerrold

The widow Pennibacker, it will at once be understood, had married Jericho wholly and solely for the sake of her children. It was, at the cost of any personal sacrifice, a duty she owed her infants to provide them with a wealthy father. She, herself—and we seek, we ask no other testimony than her own declaration—she would have been only too happy to join the dear deceased. But she had a duty to fulfil—a stern duty that held her to the earth. And she shrank not from its performance. No; suppressing her higher feelings, she gave her hand to Solomon Jericho, and chastised herself to think with calmness upon Pennibacker in his Indian tomb. She offered up—it was her frequent expression to all her bosom friends—she offered up the feelings of the widow to the duties of the mother. For what a man was Pennibacker! Especially in his grave. But such indulgent thought softens even asperity towards the departed. A natural and wholesome tenderness. The grave is the true purifier, and in the charity of the living, takes away the blots and stains from the dead.

When widow Pennibacker was first introduced to Mr. Jericho, he was whisperingly, confidentially, recommended to her indulgent notice as—a City Gentleman. Hence, Jericho appeared to the imagination of the widow, with an indescribable glory of money about him. She was a woman of naturally a lively fancy; a quality haply cultivated by her sojourn in the East, where rajahs framed in gold and jewels upon elephants were common pictures: hence, Jericho of the City of London was instantaneously rendered by the widow a man of prodigious wealth. She gave the freest, the most imaginative translation of the words—City Gentleman. Though not handsome, he was instantly considered to be most precious. Had she looked upon the Idol Ape, Tinum Bug, whose every feature is an imperial jewel set in the thickest skull of gold, and then cast a glance at Jericho, she would, we fully believe it, have chosen the City Gentleman in preference to the idol; so far, in the dizzied judgment of an impulsive, imaginative woman, did Solomon Jericho outshine Tinum Bug.

And much, it must be granted, is to be allowed to Mrs. Pennibacker as a woman and a mother. A City Gentleman! What a vision; what exhalations rise from the ink that, like magic drops fallen from Circe’s finger tips, create the radiant animal upon the white sheet before us! What a picture to the imagination, the—City Gentleman! Calm, plain, self-assured in the might of his wealth. All the bullion of the Bank of England makes back-ground details; the India-house dawns in the distance; and a hundred pennants from masts in India Docks tremble in the far-off sky.

Great odds these, against the simplicity of woman! The Bank, the India-house, and a hundred ships! Mrs. Pennibacker had huge strength of character; but she succumbed to the unknown power of visionary wealth; to the mysterious attributes of the City Gentleman. No man could less look the part, yet Jericho bowed to the widow, a perfect enchanter.

Again, Jericho was charmed, elevated by the graciousness of the lady. Like an overlooked strawberry, he had remained until in his own modesty he began to think himself hardly worth the gathering. Therefore, when Mrs. Pennibacker vouchsafed to stoop to him, he was astonished at her condescension, and melted by his own gratitude. For Mrs. Pennibacker was a majestic woman. She had brought back nothing of the softness of the East. She was not—she never had been—an oriental toy for the grown child, man. It would have been hard to couple her with thoughts of love-birds, and antelopes and gazelles. No; she rather took her place with those legendary Indian queens who hide their softness under golden bucklers; whose bows are strung with tiger-gut; and whose feminine arrows, if parrot-feathered, are fanged with mortal steel. In the picture of an ancient panther-hunt, you would have looked to see such a figure as the figure of Mrs. Pennibacker, thrusting a spear with a dread smile of self-approbation in the bowels of the objecting pard.

And then, Jericho himself had in this case imagination too: indeed, everybody has, when money is the thought, the theme. The common brain will bubble to a golden wand.

It was whispered, sharply whispered to Jericho, that the widow had many relations, many hopes in India. Immediately, Jericho flung about the lady all the treasures of the East. Immediately she stood in a shower-bath of diamonds; elephants’ teeth lay heaped about her; and rice and cotton grounds, and fields of opium, many thousands of acres of the prodigal east, stretched out on all sides of her, and on all sides called her mistress. Yet for all this, Solomon Jericho was ordinarily a dull, matter-of-fact man. Talk to him of Jacob’s ladder, and he would ask the number of the steps.

All his life had Jericho trod upon firm earth; but widow Pennibacker whipped him off his leaden feet, and carried him away into the fairy ground of Mammon; and there his eyes twinkled at imaginary wealth, and his ears burned and stood erect at the sound of shaken shadowy money-bags.

And so, each trusting to each, Solomon Jericho and Sabilla Pennibacker wooed and won each other; and the winning over, each had to count the gains. It was very strange. Jericho himself could not bear to think of the folly, the crime of the omission. Such neglect had never before betrayed him. Why had he not assured himself of the woman’s property, ere he made the woman his own? And then, for his cold comfort, he would remember that he had, on two or three occasions touched a little gravely upon the subject, whereupon Mrs. Pennibacker so opened her large, black, mysterious orbs, that his soul, like a mouse when startled by Grimalkin’s eyes—ran back into its hole. Again and again—it was a wretched satisfaction for the married man to think it—the question had been upon his tongue; when some smile of haughty loveliness would curve the widow’s lips and—how well he recollected the emotion—he felt himself the meanest wretch to doubt her.

Mrs. Pennibacker had, on her part, just played about the property of Jericho; but, with the trustingness of her sex, she was more than satisfied when Jericho, with all the simplicity of real worth, spoke calmly, yet withal hopefully, of the vast increase of profit arising from his platina mines. The word “platina” sent Mrs. Pennibacker to her Encyclopædia, which, however, comforted her exceedingly. She had instinctively known it all along; but she now felt assured,—Solomon Jericho, the holder of mines, possessed wealth inexhaustible. Being a City Gentleman, of course he sold his platina on the Stock Exchange.