“Although I have not the honour to be personally acquainted with you, I have had the advantage of an introduction to a member of your family, Major Sherbrook, when with his regiment at Malta; and my present disadvantageous circumstances emboldens me to write to you, for the claims of affliction upon the heart of the compassionate are among the holiest of those kindred ties that bind man to his fellow-being.
“My father was a large landed proprietor at Peddlethorpe, ——shire. I, his only son, had every advantage that birth and fortune could give me claim to. From an informality in the wording of my father’s will, the dishonesty of an attorney, and the rapacity of some of my poor late father’s distant relatives, the property was, at his death, thrown into Chancery, and for the last four years I have been reduced to—comparatively speaking—starvation.
“With the few relics of my former prosperity I have long since parted. My valued books, and, I am ashamed to own, my clothes, are gone. I am now in the last stage of destitution, and, I regret to say, in debt to the worthy landlord of the tavern from which I write this, to the amount of eight and sixpence. My object in coming to this part of the country was to see an old friend, whom I had hoped would have assisted me. We were on the same form together at Rugby—Mr. Joseph Thurwood of Copesthorpe. Alas! I find that he died three months ago.
“I most respectfully beg of you to grant me some trifling assistance. As in my days of prosperity I trust my heart was never deaf to the voice of entreaty, nor my purse closed to the wants of the necessitous; so dear sir, or madam, I hope that my request will not be considered by you as impertinent or intrusive.
“I have the honour to enclose you some testimonials as to my character and former station in society; and trusting that the Almighty Being may never visit you with that affliction which it has been His all-wise purpose to heap on me, I am
“Your most humble and
“Obliged servant,
“Frederick Maurice Stanhope,
“Formerly of Stanhope House, ——shire.”
The Broken-down Tradesman
is a sort of retail dealer in the same description of article as the decayed gentleman. The unexpected breaking of fourteen of the most respectable banking-houses in New York, or the loss of the cargoes of two vessels in the late autumnal gales, or the suspension of payment of Haul, Strong, and Chates, “joined and combined together with the present commercial crisis, has been the means of bringing him down to his present deplorable situation,” as his letter runs. His references are mostly from churchwardens, bankers, and dissenting clergymen, and he carries about a fictitious set of books—day-book, ledger, and petty-cash-book, containing entries of debts of large amounts, and a dazzling display of the neatest and most immaculate of commercial cyphering. His conversation, like his correspondence, is a queer jumble of arithmetic and scripture. He has a wife whose appearance is in itself a small income. She folds the hardest-working-looking of hands across the cleanest of white aprons, and curtseys with the humility of a pew-opener. The clothes of the worthy couple are shabby, but their persons and linen are rigorously clean. Their cheeks shine with yellow soap, as if they were rasped and bee’s-waxed every morning. The male impostor, when fleecing a victim, has a habit of washing his hands “with invisible soap and imperceptible water,” as though he were waiting on a customer. The wedded pair—and, generally, they are really married—are of congenial dispositions and domestic turn of mind, and get drunk, and fight each other, or go half-price to the play according to their humour. It is usually jealousy that betrays them. The husband is unfaithful, and the wife “peaches;” through her agency the police are put upon the track, and the broken-down tradesman is committed. In prison he professes extreme penitence, and has a turn for scriptural quotation, that stands him in good stead.
On his release he takes to itinerant preaching, or political lecturing. What becomes of him after those last resources it is difficult to determine. The chances are that he again writes begging letters, but “on a different lay.”