Elinor Wyllys; Or, The Young Folk of Longbridge: A Tale. Volume 1

by Susan Fenimore Cooper

{"J'ai fait des…" = I have made immense progress since Bourienne left me! Louis-Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne (1769-1834) was a French diplomat who served as Napoleon's private secretary during his invasion of Egypt}

It is a rule, in composition, it was so, at least, when people wrote by rule, to compare the little with the great. If we were to follow the direction, it would be easy to prove that these two individuals, the conqueror, Napoleon, and the speculator, Taylor, were not too widely separated for many points of resemblance to be traced between them. Ambition was the ruling passion of both; and both were alike insatiable. Bonaparte added kingdom to kingdom; Taylor, house to house; the emperor might believe himself equal to ruling half the world; the merchant felt capable of owning the other half. The one raised army after army; the other fitted out vessel after vessel. The energies of both were inexhaustible, and both aimed at an ever-receding goal; while each, in his own way, soon reached a height never dreamed of by the mothers who rocked their cradles. Nor would it be justice to Mr. Taylor, to suppose, that the love of money, alone, was the main-spring of his actions; he, too, was spurred on by the love of glory; dollars and cents were not the end, with him; he looked upon his thousands, in gold and paper, as Napoleon did upon his thousands in flesh and blood—they were but the instruments which were to open the road to fame. The man of commerce, and the man of war, were alike lavish of their treasures, when the object of their lives was in view. If one was the boldest of generals, the other was the most enterprising of merchants; and Fortune favoured the daring of both. In short, Mr. Taylor was no common, plodding trader, content with moderate gains and safe investments, and fixing his hopes on probabilities—he pursued traffic with the passion of a gambler, united to the close calculation of a miser; and yet, he spent freely what he had acquired easily.

There are merchants, who, by their education, their integrity, their talents and their liberality, are an honour to the profession; but Mr. Pompey Taylor was not of the number. We have all heard the anecdote of the young man addicted to the sin of swearing, whose conversation, during dinner, was taken down in short-hand, and, when read afterwards, shocked the individual himself. Could the thoughts and words of Mr. Taylor, during a single day, have been as fairly registered, perhaps he himself would have been astonished to find how very large a portion of them were given to gain and speculation, in some shape or other. At social meetings, whether dinners or evening parties, he seldom talked long on any other subject: he has been known to utter the word 'stocks,' just as he entered a church, on Sunday; while a question about certain lots was the first sentence which passed his lips, as he crossed the threshold on his way out. Eating his meals under his own roof; walking down Broadway to Wall-Street, every morning, at nine o'clock, and back again every afternoon at three; still the echo of Mr. Taylor's thoughts and words was 'dollars,' 'stocks,' and 'lots'—' lots,' 'stocks,' and 'dollars.' He had a value for everything in dollars—his jokes turned upon stocks—and his dreams were filled with lots. Let it not be supposed, however, that Mr. Pompey Taylor was born with the phrenological organ of the love of money more strongly developed than other human beings. By no means. He was endowed by nature with faculties and feelings as varied as other men. But, from the time he could first walk and talk, precept and example had gradually turned all his faculties in one direction; for, such had been the opinions and views of his father and elder brothers; and there was no other impulse in his nature or education, sufficiently strong to give a different bent to his energies. Under other circumstances, Pompey Taylor might have been a quick-witted lawyer, a supple politician, a daring soldier, or, with a different moral training, he might have been something far superior to either; but the field of commerce was the only one that opened to him, at his entrance into life; and it was too well adapted to the man, such as nature and education had made him, to be neglected. He found full scope, in such a sphere, for all his energies of body and mind—he delighted in its labours and its rewards.

{"phrenological" = from the pseudo-science of phrenology, which interpreted character by feeling the bulges on the human head}

Mr. Taylor had forgotten, if he had ever known the fact, that the best pleasures of this world even, are those which money cannot purchase, the severest wants those which it cannot supply. He had no conception of any consideration equal to that which riches give. Beauty unadorned was no beauty in his eyes; and he chiefly valued talent as a means of making good investments and wily speculations. He looked upon Science as the hand-maiden of Commerce; Armies and Navies existed only to defend a nation's wealth, not its liberties, or its honour. The seat of his patriotism was in his pocket; and the only internal improvement in which he was interested, was that which opened new facilities for acquiring money. It is surprising how totally such a mind becomes unfitted to enjoy and admire any great or noble quality in the abstract; in spite of a quick wit and keen organs, such men become the most one-sided beings, perhaps, in the whole human family. To moral beauty Mr. Taylor seemed quite blind; his mental vision resembled the physical sight of those individuals whose eyes, though perfect in every other respect, are incapable of receiving any impression of an object tinged with blue—the colour of the heavens. Even the few ideas he had upon religious subjects partook of the character of loss and gain; the simple spirit of true piety could never enter into a mind in the state of his. And yet, Mr. Taylor was looked upon as a happy man. Fortunate he certainly was, for wealth and luxury had risen around him almost as readily as if possessed of Aladdin's lamp. Had he been actually in possession of this gift of the genii, he could scarcely have found a wish to gratify, as money had already provided him with all it can supply in this country, and the pursuit of wealth itself was his delight. Deprived of this, Othello's occupation were gone.

{"Othello's occupation were gone" = William Shakespeare,
"Othello", III.iii.358}

Justice to Mr. Taylor would require that we should follow him to the counting-house, for it was there that he appeared in the most brilliant light. His talents were undoubted; his sagacity, his skill, and his daring were great; and his undertakings were generally successful. Thus far all appeared very well; but those who looked closer into the matter would have found that his integrity was anything but unimpeachable, his love of money far surpassing his love of truth and justice. This part of his career must be left, however, to other hands; it is only what he was in social and domestic life, that the merchant appears among our Longbridge friends.

The first few months after he had removed to New York, the utmost extent of Mr. Taylor's ambitious dreams had been the possession of a brick house in Broadway, on a lot of ground twenty-three feet by seventy. According to the favourite rule of New York architecture, the rule of three, the building was to be three stories high, and three windows wide. But the end of the first ninety days in Wall-Street, brought an accession of several thousands, and the brilliant promise of so many more, that this plan was enlarged several inches each way. As every succeeding season brought an increase of wealth and ambition, the projected dwelling grew at last to be taller and broader by several feet, until, at length, it had reached the limits which magnificence usually attains on the island of Manhattan. Had Mr. Taylor built his house in Philadelphia, or almost any other American town, he might have laid rather a broader foundation for his habitation; but New York houses, as a rule, are the narrowest and the tallest in the land. Some of those three-story dwellings, however, whatever may be their architectural defects, contain inmates who are as much to be desired for friends as any others in the world. But to return to Mr. Taylor's new house; we have said that it was one of the proud few which could boast its four stories and its four windows. He was perfectly satisfied with the result when finished, for his house from the garret to the cellar was a faithful copy of one opposite to him, which had been built some months earlier, and was pronounced the house of the season.

The American people may have been perfectly original in their constitution, but in most other respects they are particularly imitative. An observer, at a first glance, wonders that so much cleverness should be wasted in mere imitation; but it is, after all, the simple result of the position of the country. An intelligent people, we are furnished by books with more ideas than we have models on which to shape them. In an old state of society, there is always a class who labour after originality, and are proud to be called eccentric; but a young nation, cut off from the rest of the civilized world, must necessarily be imitative in its character until it has arrived at maturity. This spirit of imitation, to a certain extent an advantage, is, to be sure, often carried to a laughable extent when it loses sight of common sense. People seem to forget the fact that propriety must always be the first step to true elegance. As a proof of it, we see men who appear to have consulted their neighbours' tastes, habits, and means, instead of their own, in building the house they themselves are to inhabit; like Mr. Taylor, without any very good reason, they imitate their opposite neighbour. Again, it is surprising to see what time and toil are spent in following every variation of fashion in dress, by many women who certainly can ill afford it; we do not mean fashion in its general outlines, but in its most trifling details. If one could watch the progress of an idle fancy of this nature, from the moment it springs from the caprice of some European elegante, with more time and money than she knows how to throw away, until it becomes a necessity to an American housemaid, earning a dollar a week—we have no doubt the period would be found surprisingly short.

{"elegante" = a fashionable lady (French)}