Wenderholme: A Story of Lancashire and Yorkshire

by Philip Gilbert Hamerton

CHAPTER XII.

OGDEN'S NEW MILL.

Our Jacob, or big Jacob, or Jacob at Milend, as he now began to be called in the Ogden family, to distinguish him from his nephew and homonym, had arrived at that point in the career of every successful cotton-spinner when a feeling of great embarrassment arises as to the comparative wisdom of purchasing an estate or "laying down a new mill." When his brother Isaac retired from the concern with ten thousand pounds, Jacob had not precisely cheated him, perhaps, but he had made a bargain which, considered prospectively, was highly favorable to his own interest; and since he had been alone, the profits from the mill had been so considerable that his savings had rapidly accumulated, and he was now troubled with a very heavy balance at his bankers, and in various investments, which, to a man accustomed to receive the large interest of successful cotton-spinning, seemed little better than letting money lie idle. Mrs. Ogden had three hundred a-year from five or six very small farms of her own, which she had inherited from her mother, and this amply sufficed for the entire expenses of the little household at Milend. Jacob spent about a hundred and fifty pounds a-year on himself personally, of which two-thirds were absorbed in shooting,—the only amusement he cared about. His tailor's bill was incredibly small, for he had the excuse, when in Shayton, of being constantly about the mill, and it was natural that he should wear old fustian and corduroy there; and as for his journeys to Manchester, it was his custom on these occasions to wear the suit which had been the Sunday suit of the preceding year. His mother knitted all his stockings for him, and made his shirts, these being her usual occupations in an evening. His travelling expenses were confined to the weekly journeys to Manchester, and as these were always on business, they were charged to the concern. If Jacob Ogden had not been fond of shooting, his personal expenses, beyond food and lodging (which were provided for him by his mother), would not have exceeded fifty pounds a-year; and it is a proof of the great firmness of his character in money matters that, although by nature passionately fond of sport, he resolutely kept the cost of it within the hundred. His annual outlay upon literature was within twenty shillings; not that it is to be supposed that he spent so large a sum as one pound sterling in a regular manner upon books, but he had been tempted by a second-hand copy of Baine's 'History of Lancashire,' which, being much the worse for wear, had been marked by the bookseller at five pounds, and Jacob Ogden, by hard bargaining, had got it for four pounds nine shillings and ninepence. After this extravagance he resolved to spend no more "foolish money," as he called it, and for several years made no addition to his library, except a book on dog-breeding, and a small treatise on the preservation of game, which he rightly entered amongst his expenses as a sportsman. We are far from desiring to imply that Jacob Ogden is in this respect to be considered a representative example of the present generation of cotton-manufacturers, many of whom are highly educated men, but he may be fairly taken as a specimen of that generation which founded the colossal fortunes that excite the wonder, and sometimes, perhaps, awaken the envy, of the learned. When nature produces a creature for some especial purpose, she does not burden it with wants and desires that would scatter its force and impair its efficiency. The industrial epoch had to be inaugurated, the manufacturing districts had to be created—and to do this a body of men were needed who should be fresh springs of pure energy, and reservoirs of all but illimitable capital; men who should act with the certainty and steadiness of natural instincts which have never been impaired by the hesitations of culture and philosophy—men who were less nearly related to university professors than to the ant, and the beaver, and the bee. And if any cultivated and intellectual reader, in the thoughtful retirement of his library, feels himself superior to Jacob Ogden, the illiterate cotton-spinner, he may be reminded that he is not on all points Ogden's superior. We are all but tools in the hands of God; and as in the mind of a writer great delicacy and flexibility are necessary qualities for the work he is appointed to do, so in the mind of a great captain of industry the most valuable qualities may be the very opposite of these. Have we the energy, the directness, the singleness of purpose, the unflinching steadiness in the dullest possible labor, that mark the typical industrial chief? We know that we have not; we know that these qualities are not compatible with the tranquillity of the studious temperament and the meditative life. And if the Ogdens cannot be men of letters, neither can the men of letters be Ogdens.

It is admitted, then, that Jacob Ogden was utterly and irreclaimably illiterate. He really never read a book in his life, except, perhaps, that book on dog-breaking. Whenever he tried to read, it was a task and a labor to him; and as literature is not of the least use in the cotton trade, the energy of his indomitable will had never been brought to bear upon the mastery of a book. And yet you could not meet him without feeling that he was very intelligent—that he possessed a kind of intelligence cultivated by the closest observation of the men and things within the narrow circle of his life. Has it never occurred to the reader how wonderfully the most illiterate people often impress us with a sense of their intelligence—how men and women who never learned the alphabet have its light on their countenance and in their eyes? In Ogden's face there were clear signs of that, and of other qualities also. And there was a keenness in the glance quite different from the penetration of the thinker or the artist—a keenness which always comes from excessively close and minute attention to money matters, and from the passionate love of money, and which no other passion or occupation ever produces.

In all that related to money Jacob Ogden acted with the pitiless regularity of the irresistible forces of nature. As the sea which feeds the fisherman will drown him without remorse—as the air which we all breathe will bury us under heaps of ruin—so this man, though his capital enabled a multitude to live, would take the bed from under a sick debtor, and, rather than lose an imperceptible atom of his fortune, inflict the utmost extremity of misery. Even Hanby, his attorney, who was by no means tender-hearted, had been staggered at times by his pitilessness, and had ventured upon a feeble remonstrance. On these occasions a shade of sternness was added to the keenness of Ogden's face, and he repeated a terrible maxim, which, with one or two others, guided his life: "If a man means to be rich, he must have no fine feelings;" and then he would add, "I mean to be rich."

Perhaps he would have had fine feelings on a Sunday, for on Sundays he was religious, and went to church, where he heard a good deal about being merciful and forgiving which on week-days he would have attributed to the influence of the sentiments which he despised. But Ogden was far too judicious an economist of human activities to be ignorant of the great art of self-adaptation to the duties and purposes of the hour; and as a prudent lawyer who has a taste for music will take care that it shall not interfere with his professional work, so Jacob Ogden, who really had rather a taste for religion, and liked to sit in church with gloved hands and a clean face, had no notion of allowing the beautiful sentiments which he heard there to paralyze his action on a week-day. Every Sunday he prayed repeatedly that God would forgive him his debts or trespasses as he forgave his debtors or those that trespassed against him; but that was no reason why he should not, from Monday morning to Saturday night inclusively, compel everybody to pay what he owed, and distress him for it if necessary. After all, he acted so simply and instinctively that one can hardly blame him very severely. The truest definition of him would be, an incarnate natural force. The forces of wealth, which are as much natural forces as those of fire and frost, had incarnated themselves in him. His sympathy with money was so complete, he had so entirely subjected his mind to it, so thoroughly made himself its pupil and its mouth-piece, that it is less accurate to say that he had money than that he was money. Jacob Ogden was a certain sum of money whose unique idea was its own increase, and which acted in obedience to the laws of wealth as infallibly as a planet acts in obedience to the cosmic forces.

It is only natural that a man so endowed and so situated should grow rich. In all respects circumstances were favorable to him. He had robust health and indefatigable energy. His position in a little place like Shayton, where habits of spending had not yet penetrated, was also greatly in his favor, because it sheltered him in undisturbed obscurity. No man who is born to wealth, and has lived from his infancy in the upper class, will confine his expenditure during the best years of manhood to the pittance which sufficed for Ogden. It was an advantage to him, also, that his mind should be empty, because he needed all the room in it for the endless details concerning his property and his trade. No fact of this nature, however minute, escaped him. His knowledge of the present state of all that belonged to him was so clear and accurate, and his foresight as to probable changes so sure, that he anticipated every thing, and neutralized every cause of loss before it had time to develop itself.

That a man whose daily existence proved the fewness of his wants should have an eager desire for money, may appear one of the inconsistencies of human nature; but in the case of Jacob Ogden, and in thousands of cases similar to his, there is no real inconsistency. He did not desire money in order to live luxuriously; he desired it because the mere possession of it brought increased personal consideration, and gave him weight and importance in the little community he lived in. And when a man relies on wealth alone for his position—when he is, obviously, not a gentleman—he needs a great quantity of it. Another reason why Jacob Ogden never felt that he had enough was because the men with whom he habitually compared himself, and whom he wished to distance in the race, did not themselves remain stationary, but enriched themselves so fast that it needed all Jacob Ogden's genius for money-getting to keep up with them; for men of talent in every order compare themselves with their equals and rivals, and not with the herd of the incapable. It was his custom to go to Manchester in the same railway carriage with four or five men of business, who talked of nothing but investments, and it would have made Jacob Ogden miserable not to be able to take a share in these conversations on terms of perfect equality.

"I'm sure," thought Mrs. Ogden, "that our Jacob's got something on his mind. He sits and thinks a deal more than he used doin'. He's 'appen[11] fallen in love, an' doesn't like to tell me about it, because it's same as tellin' me to leave Milend."