Bentley's Miscellany, Volume I

by Various

We have alluded to the patent for a dust-consuming broom, with which John was so marvellously elated. The worst of it was, that it involved him in a law-suit with Mr. Pratt, who clearly proved to the judge and jury that he had perfected a similar besom five years before. It was in vain that John's counsel argued that his broom acted transversely, not horizontally; and possessed a vertical, not a rotary action; in vain he asserted that new brooms swept cleanest: the verdict was for the plaintiff; and the infringement of the right to use a useless brush cost Mr. Pooledoune within a trifle of a thousand pounds. The lawyers and attorneys declared that it was a shameful verdict, and advised Mr. Pooledoune to move for a new trial; but he had sense enough to be satisfied with one.

Misfortunes, we are told, never come single. Like crows, if you see one alight on a field, you may be pretty sure there will soon be a few more, and probably a flock; and so it fell out with our hero's mischances.

A company was formed upon the most admirable principles to supply the metropolis with pure water instead of the abomination hitherto imbibed from the polluted river, the grand recipient of the filth of a million and a half of nasty people. It was to be brought from Tonbridge Wells, laid on in crystal pipes, and supplied with a bounty that defied competition. John Pooledoune became a large shareholder and a director; but somehow or other the stream did not run smooth, the crystal pipes broke, and so did the company; and John, being a responsible person, got out with the largest share—of the loss. He next embarked in gas works, the most prosperous that ever were demonstrated by calculations and estimates on the tables printed by the projectors. But this design, alas! also failed: the gas dissolved into thin air; and another troublesome and expensive law-suit proved that the thousands of tons of coke which had been consumed were utterly wasted, as their use in that particular way, custom, and manner, was not sanctioned by Coke upon Lyttleton.—See Vesey's Reports, div. 4, cap. 3, lib. 2, page 1.

This was another rather severe blow upon Mr. Pooledoune, who began to reflect on the uncertainty of all pursuits of the kind. "I will not," said he to himself, "risk any more considerable sums in such plans. Houses and lands," said he, "are certain, real, visible, tangible property: I will buy an estate and build a house upon it." Accordingly, day after day did he examine those oracles of truth, the morning newspapers; and particularly that portion of them which is the truest of the true, the advertisements of the auctioneers. Long did he ponder over the most desirable of investments, the most eligible of sites, the paradises of nature, the soils which scantily concealed inexhaustible mines, the views of hanging woods whose trees never changed their fruits: long did he balance which it were best to possess; and at last he was fortunate enough to be allowed to purchase one of George Robins' most extraordinary bargains, an estate which was positively "given away". It was nevertheless dear enough to the buyer; and the seller had not so much reason as might be imagined to be dissatisfied with the prodigal liberality of his agent on the occasion. The land was found to be susceptible of no inconsiderable improvement; and the charming, picturesque, indescribably interesting, and gothically elegant, fine, ancient mansion, was in truth little better than an inconvenient and incongruous pile of ruins. But as Mr. Pooledoune had, from the first, intended to cultivate the earth in his own way, and to erect a mansion upon his own design, these slight discrepancies did not so much signify. The titles were actually good, and old Hurlépoer Hall was regularly transferred, made over, granted, and assigned to its new proprietor, John Pooledoune, esquire. It is a proud thing to be an esquire, the owner of broad acres, to walk over fields you can call your own, to speak of your domain and your country house, of your Hurlépoer Hall, and the parts and appurtenances thereunto pertaining. Never did John Pooledoune feel so elevated as when he arrived in a post-chaise to take possession of his beautiful estate. It was only an amusing drawback, which served to occupy his time, that he had to pull down the old hall and re-edify it in a modern style. There was ready money, and the work went briskly on, till at last a handsome villa stood where Hurlépoer, or at least some of its walls, had outbraved the winds and rains two hundred winters. It was christened Hosiery Hall by some of the poor and envious landlords round about; but it was nevertheless a very pretty place, and constructed on the most novel and approved principles of architecture. The foundations were laid in Roman cement, the timbers were steeped to saturation in Kyan's anti-dry-rot composition, and the roof was of patent cast-iron. Nor had Mr. P. during the season been inattentive to the cultivation of his ground. The steward, a positive, ignorant, and impracticable ass, was dismissed the service, for insisting upon sowing wheat, and barley, and oats; laying certain portions fallow, and turnip-cropping other parts. The squire taking affairs into his own hands, the farm-horses were sold, and a wonderfully perfect steam-plough put into operation. Instead of turnips, the cow-cabbage was introduced, and room left about every plant to allow it to extend to its full dimensions of from eighteen to twenty-two feet in diameter. The corn-arable was converted into plantations of beetroot for the manufacture of sugar, and a thousand hogsheads for its reception were ordered of the coopers. Everything went on tolerably well for a while, except the plough, which always refused to move up hill or to go straight on the level, and very soon denied motion in any manner, or in any direction. Mr. Pooledoune, incensed at this misconduct, which he attributed to the stupidity of the ploughman and the malice of the quondam driver, who had no longer any horses to drive, and consequently went whistling alongside, occasionally eyeing his useless whip, as if he would gladly apply it to his master's back, in a moment of anger took the stilts himself, to show the boors how it ought to be done. He poked the fire and filled the kettle, and off set the machine with a run. Unluckily there was a great stone in the line of the furrow, against which the plough was dashed with so much force that it tilted up, and, throwing down its unfortunate holder, dashed the burning coals and boiling steam all over his body. Dreadfully scalded, it was many weeks before the squire was sufficiently convalescent to leave his room; and when he did once again visit his ci-devant green fields, it was as a cripple from the severe accident. The melancholy of autumn, too, was upon the scene,—a melancholy untempered to him by the sight of sweeps of ripened grain, (the yellow gold of nature,) and the busy hum of harvest. The season had been unusually dry, and the soil was chalky. Owing to this the cow-cabbages had not flourished, and only one here and there was visible, and about the ordinary size of a tailor's dinner, though with plenty of room to grow larger if it liked. The cultivation of the beetroot was hardly more successful; still there was wherewithal to try the experiment of sugar-making, and to this our sanguine hero turned with his indomitable spirit. The process went on, and the roots were crushed;—so, speedily, were his hopes. Twenty-seven barrels of bad molasses was the produce of above eight hundred acres of the best land belonging to Hurlépoer Hall. It was a year of dead loss, and there was nothing left for it but to get through the winter as comfortably as possible, and prepare for taking the field in the spring with greater experience, and a more improved system throughout.

It is a well-known fact with regard to the weather in England, that if there be a balance of good and bad, the latter never fails to occupy its fair proportion of foulness. As the summer had been unusually warm and dry, the winter turned out unusually cold and wet. The rain hardly ceased during four months, the country was a swamp, and there was not even enough for a dry joke in the parish. One night the storm descended, hail was shaken and lightning glanced from the wings of the mighty tempest: it was a perfect hurricane, (for hurricanes are so called when they are most fearfully outrageous,) and blew great guns. In the midst of the rattling, and spouting, and howling, a dreadful crash was heard by the inhabitants of Hurlépoer villa; the walls tottered, and they rushed forth in nakedness and desperation. Nor had they a moment to spare; for the Roman-cement foundations gave way, the anti-dry-rot timbers split into a thousand splinters, and the ponderous patent iron roof descended with one awful and crushing demolition upon the wrecks below. Poor Pooledoune was again unfortunate. Having delayed a minute to save an electrical apparatus for making diamonds of flints and asparagus, in which he had all but succeeded, he was struck by a projected mass of the broken wood, and had his right arm very badly fractured.

With these calamities terminated John Pooledoune's rural experiments. Hurlépoer was soon again in the market, but the value of land had fallen tremendously within the last eighteen months; and, though the auctioneer did his utmost, that which had cost twenty thousand pounds so short a while ago was sold for eight thousand pounds, and John's whole fortune reduced to little more than ten. Still there was a competency; and with the mind of a projector there is always contentment. John bought a small ready-furnished house, about two miles out of London, and sat down under its lowly slate roof, and all his troubles, with most philosophic apathy.

He engaged in lesser speculations with the same ardour with which he had embarked in extensive undertakings; but the doom of the Gipsies of Norwood was still upon him, and

"By making rich, made poor; By making happy, miserable; By amending, hurt;" * * *

continued to mark his progress—his progress!—his retrograde progress in life.

He had not been settled in his humble abode beyond the first quarter, making discoveries in science of the most astonishing description, when a railroad between Billingsgate and Blackwell drove him from his home. Private interests must always yield to public advantages. The road went right through Mr. Pooledoune's parlour; but then, when completed, how easy it would be to bring, by its ready means, white-bait from the water-side to the city; and how much toil and expense would be saved to the citizens in having their feed without the trouble of journeying so far for it in the heat of sultry summer. The greatest affliction to the individual was not the deterioration which his fortune again experienced in removing, but a calamity which had almost overwhelmed even his steadfast soul. We have said he was on the point of realising the most amazing discoveries in natural science. By a battery of unlimited galvanic power, continually directed to stones abstracted from St. Paul's Cathedral, Waterloo-bridge, and the Monument, he had ascertained that the church was built of the fur of the pulex, the bridge of butterflies' facets, and the Monument of midges' wings. Indeed he had obtained all these creatures entire and lively, in the course of his experiments upon decomposing the St. Paul pebbles, the Waterloo-bridge granite, and the Monumental free-stone; and the only difficulty which remained for solution was, that above a hundred other unknown and undescribed insects, probably of the antediluvian world, had been produced at the same time, and by the same means. It was hard, but the railroad caused the destruction of this theory; and several of the retorts being broken, the revivification interrupted, the reanimated killed, and the whole process served out, Mr. Pooledoune never enjoyed another opportunity for demonstrating these incomparable results. Thousands of years may elapse before any other experimentalist succeed to such an extent; and millions of men and philosophers of intermediate generations will die meanwhile, ignorant of the prodigious injury done to science and to John Pooledoune by the railroad between Billingsgate and Blackwell.