Chapter 1

MY GRANDFATHER AND HIS SONS.

There was a time--a good old time--when men of rank and fortune were not ashamed of their poor relations; affording the protection of their name and influence to the lower shoots of the great family tree, which, springing from the same root, expected to derive support and nourishment from the main stem.

That time is well-nigh gone for ever. Kindred love and hospitality have decreased with the increase of modern luxury and exclusiveness, and the sacred ties of consanguinity are now regarded with indifference; or if recognized, it is only with those who move in the same charmed circle, and who make a respectable appearance in the world: then, and then only, are their names pronounced with reverence, and their relationship considered an honor.

It is amusing to watch from a distance, the eagerness with which some people assert their claims to relationship with wealthy and titled families, and the intrigue and manoeuvring it calls forth in these fortunate individuals, in order to disclaim the boasted connexion.

It was my fate for many years to eat the bitter bread of dependence, as one of those despised and insulted domestic annoyances--_A Poor Relation_.

My grandfather, Geoffrey Moncton, whose name I bear, was the youngest son of a wealthy Yorkshire Baronet, whose hopes and affections entirely centered in his first-born. What became of the junior scions of the family-tree was to him a matter of secondary consideration. My grandfather, however, had to be provided for in a manner becoming the son of a gentleman, and on his leaving college, Sir Robert offered to purchase him a commission in the army.

My grandfather was a lad of peaceable habits, and had a mortal antipathy to fighting. He refused point blank to be a soldier. The Navy offered the same cause for objection, strengthened by a natural aversion to the water, which made him decline going to sea.

What was to be done with the incorrigible youth? Sir Robert flew into a passion--called him a coward--a disgrace to the name of Moncton.

My grandfather, who was a philosopher in his way, pleaded guilty to the first charge. From his cradle he had carefully avoided scenes of strife and violence, and had been a quiet, industrious boy at school, a sober plodding student at college, minding his own business, and troubling himself very little with the affairs of others. The sight of blood made him sick; he hated the smell of gunpowder, and would make any sacrifice of time and trouble rather than come to blows. He now listened to the long catalogue of his demerits, which his angry progenitor poured forth against him, with such stoical indifference, that it nearly drew upon him the corporeal punishment which at all times he so much dreaded.

Sir Robert at length named the Church, as the profession best suited to a young man of his peaceable disposition, and flew into a fresh paroxysm of rage, when the obstinate fellow positively refused to be a parson.

"He had a horror," he said, "of making a mere profession of so sacred a calling. Besides, he had an awkward impediment in his speech, and he did not mean to stand up in a pulpit to expose his infirmity to the ridicule of others."

Honour to my grandfather. He was not deficient in mental courage, though Sir Robert, in the plenitude of his wisdom, had thought fit to brand him as a coward.

The bar was next proposed for his consideration, but the lad replied firmly, "I don't mean to be a lawyer."

"Your reasons, sir?" cried Sir Robert in a tone which seemed to forbid a liberty of choice.

"I have neither talent nor inclination for the profession."

"And pray, sir, what have you talent or inclination for?"

"A merchant," returned Geoffrey calmly and decidedly, without appearing to notice his aristocratic sire's look of withering contempt. "I have no wish to be a poor gentleman. Place me in my Uncle Drury's counting-house, and I will work hard and become an independent man."

Now this Uncle Drury was brother to the late Lady Moncton, who had been married by the worthy Baronet for her wealth. He was one of Sir Robert's horrors--one of those rich, vulgar connections which are not so easily shaken off, and whose identity is with great difficulty denied to the world. Sir Robert vowed, that if the perverse lad persisted in his grovelling choice, though he had but two sons, he would discard him altogether.

Obstinacy is a family failing of the Monctons. My grandfather, wisely, or unwisely, as circumstances should afterwards determine, remained firm to his purpose. Sir Robert realized his threat. The father and son parted in anger, and from that hour, the latter was looked upon as an alien to the old family stock; which he was considered to have disgraced.

Geoffrey, however, succeeded in carrying out his great life object. He toiled on with indefatigable industry, and soon became rich. He had singular talents for acquiring wealth, and they were not suffered to remain idle. The few pounds with which he commenced his mercantile career, soon multiplied into thousands, and tens of thousands; and there is no knowing what an immense fortune he might have realized, had not death cut short his speculations at an early period of his life.

He had married uncle Drury's only daughter, a few years after he became partner in the firm, by whom he had two sons, Edward and Robert, to both of whom he bequeathed an excellent property.

Edward, the eldest, my father, had been educated to fill the mercantile situation, now vacant by its proprietor's death, which was an ample fortune in itself, if conducted with prudence and regularity.

Robert had been early placed in the office of a lawyer of eminence, and was considered a youth of great talents and promise. Their mother had been dead for some years, and of her little is known in the annals of the family. When speculating upon the subject, I have imagined her to have been a plain, quiet, matter-of-fact body, who never did or said anything worth recording.

When a man's position in life is marked out for him by others, and he is left no voice in the matter, in nine cases out of ten, he is totally unfitted by nature and inclination for the post he is called to fill. So it was with my father, Edward Moncton. A person less adapted to fill an important place in the mercantile world, could scarcely have been found. He had a genius for spending, not for making money; and was so easy and credulous that any artful villain might dupe him out of it. Had he been heir to the title and the old family estates, he would have made a first rate country gentleman; for he possessed a fine manly person, was frank and generous, and excelled in all athletic sports.

My Uncle Robert was the very reverse of my father--stern, shrewd, and secretive; no one could see more of his mind than he was willing to show; and, like my grandfather, he had a great love for money, and a natural talent for acquiring it. An old servant of my grandfather's, Nicholas Banks, used jocosely to say of him: "Had Master Robert been born a beggar, he would have converted his ragged wrap-rascal into a velvet gown. The art of making money was born in him."

Uncle Robert was very successful in his profession; and such is the respect that men of common minds pay to wealth for its own sake, that my uncle was as much courted by persons of his class, as if he had been Lord Chancellor of England. He was called the _honest lawyer_: wherefore, I never could determine, except that he was the _rich_ lawyer; and people could not imagine that the envied possessor of five thousand per annum, could have any inducement to play the rogue, or cheat his clients. The dependent slave who was chained all day to the desk, in Robert Moncton's office, knew him to be a dishonest man; but his practice daily increased, and his reputation and fortune increased in proportion.

The habits and dispositions of these brothers were so different, so utterly opposed to each other, that it was difficult to reconcile the mind to the fact that they were so closely related.

My uncle had a subtle knowledge of character, which was rendered more acute by his long acquaintance with the world; and he did not always turn it to a righteous account. My father was a babe in these matters--a cunning child might deceive him. While my uncle had a knack of saving without appearing parsimonious, my father had an unfortunate habit of frittering his money away upon trifles. You would have imagined that the one had discovered the secret of the philosopher's stone; and the other had ruined himself in endeavouring to find it out. The one was economical from choice, the other extravagant from the mere love of spending. My uncle married a rich merchant's daughter, for her money. My father ran off with a poor curate's penniless girl, for love. My father neglected his business and became poor. In the hope of redeeming his fortune he frequented the turf and the gambling-table; and died broken-hearted and insolvent in the prime of manhood; leaving his widow and her orphan boy to the protection and guardianship of the brother, who had drudged all his life to become a millionaire.

My dear mother only survived her handsome, reckless husband six short months; and, bereaved of both my natural protectors, I was doomed at the early age of eight years to drink the bitter cup of poverty and dependence to its very dregs.