“I fear I had not my usual foresight about me when I did say so,” said Mr. Tallant.
And he said truly; but having risen by hard work himself, and sprung from a comparatively humble position, Mr. Tallant was one of those men who like to see their children in the other extreme, and who, never having been within the pale of college and aristocratic life, believe, and truly, that, to be a leader therein, a merchant’s son must let his money fly freely, and like a prince indeed.
He had given his son a free rein. When first Richard went to Oxford, he had been snubbed by a young lord, and an epigram had been levelled at him, the point of which turned upon his name and origin; he was called the produce of fifty talents of silver invested in iron.
When Richard told his father this, the great merchant snapped his fingers, and said he could buy up all the Oxford lords in a heap, and, turning cleverly round upon their lordships, in reply to the epigrammatic hit at his son’s origin, he said,
“Never mind them, Dick; there’s as good blood in your veins as there is in any of theirs; it may not come from a swell who plundered the Saxons at the time of the Norman Conquest, or mixed in the vices of licentious courts; there is no dishonour in it, and it has to be proved yet whether to spring from merchant princes of England is not the highest of all descent.”
“Bravo,” said Mr. Richard Tallant; “why, father, you speak like an orator. That hit about the merchant princes would drive half-a-dozen hustings mad.”
Mr. Tallant had warmed up, and was angry; he paid no attention to his son’s comment; he only saw before him some “stuck up” aristocrat sneering at his name and origin.
“Look here, Dick,” he continued, producing a blank cheque, “fill that up in the presence of these aristocratic snobs, and show them what the Tallants can do.”
This was surely putting too much of power and revenge into the hands of a young man naturally frivolous and overbearing, and it no doubt influenced, in a great measure, his future career.
One would have given Mr. Christopher Tallant credit for more real worldly wisdom than this; he could, perhaps, have borne “the proud man’s contumely” himself; he might have shrugged his shoulders, and sneered at it, with a consoling thought about his wealth; he might have said to himself, “Ah, never mind, I could buy you up, stick and stone” (for he was weak, you see, on this point); but he would not have protested and been demonstrative: contempt would have been his answer, and, in the midst of his commercial cares, he would have speedily forgotten the inane taunt. To have his son treated with indifference, to see him taunted with his origin, by men who had nothing but their ancestors to boast about; this was a different thing altogether, and he chafed at it, and was angry indeed.