“Dear Samuel” (he writes to his friend the money-lender at Oxford)—“Nephew Reuben McCubbie whispers me that the old lord has done the handsome thing by the young Baddlesmere cub; and that is as I said it should be. By the Christian gods, I should have been a minor prophet in the clear air of Jerusalem, and might even have got into the Talmud—but we live in dull days. London’s a sooty hole when all is said—even intellect shows dimly, except on the Stock Exchange. Greatness has to bump against the neck of the Anglo-Saxon race before the Anglo-Saxon race sees it. Therefore I am neglected.
But I am worried just now with the details of an affair that forces itself upon me even more prominently than my obesity.
My great illustrated paper has now been going for nigh six months. All the little pen-and-ink gods of criticism agree that it is the most artistic, the most brilliant, the best produced thing in the market—all agree even more that it has shown up the tawdry vulgarity of Pompey Malahide’s literary debauches. But—it has cost ten thousand pun!!!!! Please note the hysterisks. It’s quite as bad as all that. Not a one of the artists has been paid—nor not a one of the literary gents. I was not born for nothing—nor the bankruptcy laws made to thwart commercial genius. I got them to go in on sharing terms for the first six months—the profit as well as the risk to be theirs instead of going into the pockets of sordid city men. See? I played the full brass band of self-interest to their conceit and greed—which, Samuel, I fear is at the bottom of much human nature, even outside Judea. Well, the trade is a-owing to the harmonious tune of eight thousand pun. And the trade has decided to stop the concern and divide what shilling in the poundage is owing thereto.
I am the trade. See?
The McCubbie syndicate. See?
I don’t appear. See?
So don’t you burst into tears for me. I lured the boys with dreams beyond avarice—I showed them Pomp Malahide and the girls driving by! They gave their genius whole—like the gentlemen they are.
Well, we have failed to elevate journalism. It must lapse back into its old sordid channels.
Meanwhile, I am about to put in a bailiff in the name of the McCubbie printing syndicate upon the carved oak chest in the hall of our superior friend, Bartholomew Doome—that lordly person, being always backed with money in some mysterious way, having confessed, pathetic fact, that he had absolutely no settled income beyond what he makes from year to year by the exercise of his talents. Not that I have anything against the youth—I rather like the Nobs; but them tapestries! real goblins, my boy! they are mine.... And the pictures! Bouchers are running into five figures at the sale-rooms; Samuel, they are mine. And as for the Watteau—what ho! And the Adams and Chippendale and Louis furniture and the whole splendid treasure! You could almost kiss it, Samuel—well, I think that we are going to get our eight thousand back, God be praised. But it will be the Sabbath in seven minutes, so I must cease from honest labour—and I prepare to do so in a reverent spirit, for it is one of the brightest Friday afternoons I have spent since you and me played marbles in the Minories.
God be merciful to you a sinner.
Yours, in the plentitude of my powers,
I. Tankerton Wollup.”
When, in the early morning, Fluffy Reubens, yawning in a loose dressing-gown as he shuffled along muttering guttural curses at the violent ringing of the bell, opened the outer door of Doome’s studio, and thrust out a tousled head, a melancholy man came in with the milk, walked gloomily to the oak chest in the hall, and took possession.
Fluffy Reubens shut the door, went over to the seated man, and, thrusting his hands deep into the pockets of his dressing-gown, and straddling out his legs, stood and gazed at him:
“Whee-hee-hewy-hewy-hewy!” whistled he.
The cadaverous sickly-looking fellow on the oak chest, watching him suspiciously out of anxious eyes, searched in the breast pocket of his dingy coat, and handed him a sheet of blue paper.
Fluffy Reubens kicked it out of his hand; and the sickly person ducked his head and raised a defensive elbow:
“Chuck it, guv’nor,” he said hoarsely—and coughed.
“Don’t talk slang!” said Fluffy Reubens. “What’s your name?”
“Sickers,” said the sickly person.
“Who gave you that name?”