The man of business, or, Stokeshill Place

Front matter

THE n

MANOF;BUSINESS

X

Chapter II

John, the Cricketer, was probably the only one at Stokeshill, whose rest that night was uninfluenced by the great event of the day. While his dreams were cheered by reminiscences of the innings of the morning, Margaret's serenity of mind was disturbed by striving to recall the exact terms in which she had attempted to convey her refusal to Edward Sullivan, without infraction of those dignities of the sex impressed upon her observance by Miss Winston. Barnsley lay awake nearly five minutes weighing the eligibilities of the divers chaperons within his reach, to undertake the first introduction of his daughter to society at the fetes about to take place at Wynnex Abbey; — while the midnight cogitations of the poor governess were of a far less cheering description.

Eor twelve years past, Miss Winston had formed part of the establishment at Stokeshill ; and Mr. Barnsley's engagement, that she should continue in the family till the marriage of her pupil, had seemed to promise happiness of half-a-dozen years' stability. She had been promoted to her office from a teachership at a boarding-school ; and there was nothing in her former experience of the privations of life, to reconcile her to her prospects of penurious independence.

On quitting Mr. Barnsley's roof, her income would consist of one hundred and fifty pounds a-year, two-thirds of which arose from an annuity settled upon her by her patron ; — her prospects in life — a blank ! Her existence had been an easy one. Margaret was an affectionate, submissive child, — Mr. Barnsley too much occupied with county and parish business to interfere with her arrangements ; and beyond Stokeshill, her pupil, and her pupil's father, she had not a bie on earth ! Eor the governess insulated for twelve years in the family of which she is the hireling, abjures all connection with the external world. Yet, in her desolate

10 THE MAX OF BUSINESS; OR,

fiftieth year, she may be cast forth into the wilderness of the world ; while high and low applaud the liberality of those who have doled out scanty bread to secure the remainder of her days from starvation.

There were moments, indeed, when poor Miss Winston felt that she should obtain an exceeding rich reward for all her self-denial, in the excellent results of the education she had bestowed on Margaret. But under the present shock of discovering that she might be called upon to resign her five years before she had calculated on any such calamity, all she could do was to weep a few bitter tears, and hope for the best.

' Margaret is very much grown, lately,' observed Mr. Barnsley, the following morning, at breakfast, laying down the newspaper which, according to the laudable custom of English gentlemen, he was in the habit of reading during the meal, so as to necessitate silence among the rest of the party.

'Do you think so, sir?' replied Miss "Winston. 'She holds herself better than last year ; which may make a difference.'

' Tou will soon be seventeen, I fancy ?' resumed Barnsley, addressing his daughter, whose face was suffused with blushes at finding herself the object of such unusual consideration.

' My birth-day was last month, papa,' replied Margaret. And, as the day which witnessed the birth of his only child had also made him a widower, some surprise arose in even Miss Winston's unexcitable mind, that the anniversary should be so easily overlooked by Mr. Barnsley.

' Last month ? — the 15th of September ? — ay, very true ! It must have been when I was over at Maidstone, at the sessions; it wholly escaped my memory. I have always intended, Margaret, that at seventeen you should take the head of my table. Miss Winston, of course, will see the propriety of my wish. We will begin from to-day.'

' Indeed, papa,' said Margaret, in a remonstrating voice, ' I feel so — '

' My dear, your papa wishes it,' interrupted Miss Winston; and with Miss Winston, Margaret never presumed to remonstrate.

' Henceforward, my dear,' resumed her father, pursuing his own train of reflections, ' I shall look to you as mistress of my establishment. "With Miss "Winston's advice, you will undertake the control of the house. At the end of the month, too, there is to be a ball at "Wynnex Abbey, in honour of Lord Shoreham's coming of age; it will be an excellent opportunity for your introduction to the county. It is time, Margaret, you should learn something of the world. By the way, my dear, remind me to write out a draft for you on Closeman, after breakfast. Tou must have a new set of dresses^and I shall desire Hamlet (who has promised me the new icepails and tureens for next week) to send down a few ornaments for your selection. "What stones do you prefer ?'

Margaret looked towards Miss "Winston for a reply.

' Pink topazes are very pretty,' suggested the governess — ' I think, my dear, you would like pink topazes.'

'I am not fond of ornaments, papa,' said Margaret, venturing, for once, to have an opinion of her own.

'Tou have never yet had occasion to be full-dressed. Now you are coming out, you must appear as becomes Miss Barnsley of Stokeshill. My daughter must not be less handsomely set off than others of our position in the county.'

' As you are so kind as to give me my choice, then,' said Margaret, taking courage, ' I should prefer a pearl necklace.'

And the submissive girl, who had not presumed to have an opinion of her own in the choice of her husband, trembled at having ventured to express a preference in the selection of a necklace.

It happened to be the day of the weekly justice-meeting at Westerton ; and immediately after breakfast, Mr. Barnsley's horses were again announced by John. The justice-meeting was to Barnsley, what the Italian Opera may be supposed to be to a fine lady ; and away went papa, his head cleared of all thought of drafts or necklaces, by the necessity of arming himself with certain parochial documents to be laid before his brother magistrates, Mr. Holloway of "Whitshamstead Hall, Mr. Sullivan of Hawkhurst Hill, and Closeman of Cinnamon Lodge. Even his favourite mare, as she stood at the door, seemed to have imbibed the fidgety, fussy

12 THU MAN OF BUSINESS; 01!,

air, assumed by her master on these memorable days— the golden ones of the calendar to the man of business.

Barnsley was, in fact, a notable exemplification of the adage, that —

Just as the twig is bent, the tree's inclined.

His father, a man retired from trade with sufficient fortune to make himself comfortable without the ambition of making himself ridiculous, had procured for his eldest son a cavalry commission in India, and given to John, his youngest, a plain, useful education at the Tonbridge Grammar School ; where he was likely to form no aristocratic connections to inspire him with a taste for a betting, instead of a day-book, or the St. Leger instead of the ledger.

Young John, who, like his father, possessed a calculating head, having obtained meanwhile one of the exhibitions attached to the Tonbridge school, entertained ardent hopes of stamping his scholarship current by a degree at the university, preparatory to entering one of the learned professions. But the old man had too much worldly wisdom under his "Welch wig to hazard any such precarious attempt.

' My money's of my own making ; and Kitty, Sally, and Jane, must share and share alike with Clement and yourself. Each of you will touch a matter of five thousand pounds ; which won't do to fall back upon, in case of failure in a profession,' quoth the old man, when applying his paternal shears to the wings of John Barnsley' s ambition ; ' so I've just articled you, my boy, to my old friends AVinchmore and Trannis, of the Adelphi, as respectable a house of business in the attorney line, as any in Lon'on town. Take my word fur't, Jack, they'll put you in the way of making good bread.'

Against such a sentence, John knew there was no appeal: and thus, — nailed to the desk — his aspirations soon limited themselves to the level of the high horse-hair stool, on which the remainder of his youth was to be pounce-and-parchmented away. Barnsley, from a steady lad, became a prudent young man ; and fortune, whose mysterious wheel rolls its way into such strange holes and corners, found means to detect John Barnsley in his obscure office in the Adelphi.

It happened that Mr. Abraham Trannis, who, despite his

STOICESHILL PLACE. 13

three-score years and twelve, rejoiced in the title of junior partner in the firm ofWinchmore and Co., 'was a rich oddity — very rich and very odd — such as the present century has beheld only in the impersonations of Munden. Late in life, he had married his housekeeper, and lost her too soon after the marriage, to find leisure for repentance ; more especially as she had bequeathed him a daughter, to afford some excuse to himself in quitting the world, for the rigid parsimony and devotion to business by which he had rendered his sojourn there a period of penance.

But in the course of his long attorneyship, Trannis had obtained so much insight into the perils and dangers environing an heiress's career, that as Mary advanced towards womanhood and his daily glance at his looking-glass showed him his well-worn caxon a world too wide for his shrunk cheeks, he grew uneasy at the notion of leaving his daughter and his ducats to the mercy of the fops of the west end. He wished to see her settled before he died ; and, as his ambition extended rather to the preservation of his hoard than to its augmentation, could think of nothing better than to treat with his old friend Barnsley for his steady son John to become his son-in-law, just as his friend Barnsley had treated with himself to make the said John his clerk.

The matter was speedily arranged. To Barnsley's prospective five thousand pounds, the prudent attorney added five and twenty thousand down, by way of dowry ; and the promise of his share in the business and the remainder of nis fortune, at his decease. The amount of that remainder had often afforded a topic of conjecture to the clerks in his office, as they gossipped, with their quills behind their ears, during the luncheon of their principals. John Barnsley had heard it surmised at fifty thousand pounds ; and as his heart was somewhat of the consistency of one of the skins of parchment which his life was passed in engrossing, the proposition of the old gentleman was accepted with as much avidity, as is the mitre of Durham by the lowliest minded of nolo episcoparians.

When, on the following Sunday, Mary Trannis was introduced into her father's dining-room, from the boarding-school at Kensington from whence she was chaperoned by Miss "Winston, then one of the teachers, John Barnsley beheld a fair, delicate, elegant girl, — be was perhaps the only young man on whom fortune could have heaped such an excess of favours, without inspiring the sentiment tbat the lovely bride, thus forced upon his acceptance, was the most precious of them all.

What Mary thought of her intended husband is comparatively unimportant ; the old gentleman was delighted. The Barnsley family exerted themselves to the utmost to do honour to so auspicious an alliance. Their house was thrown open for feasting and hospitality ; and old Mr. Trannis, after a round of dinners with the father, grandmother, uncles and aunts of his son-in-law, caught an inflammatory cold from the too frequent use of his silk waistcoat and Sunday wig, — and died !

Had the event occurred only five weeks before, Mary Trannis would have found herself heiress to one hundred and thirty-five thousand pounds, encumbered only with her fair person and feminine disposition. As i%. was. her noble inheritance was rendered abortive by a husband of vulgar mind and disagreeable manners. — Her fate was sealed.

Even amidst the pre-occupation arising from his extraordinary accession of property, young Barnsley found leisure to note that his young wife was of what he considered a sadly moping disposition. His sisters observed, that Mrs. John had weak spirits ; his father, that she had weak health. But a convenient solution was found for her despondency, in the recent death of her father ; and it argued strongly in honour of filial instinct, that her tears should flow so abundantly for the loss of a parent seventy -three years of age, with whom, during her whole lifetime, she had never held half-an-hour's uninterrupted conversation.

In the course of six months, however, Mrs. Barnsley's countenance put forth a rainbow ! Her husband, whose love of consequence exceeded even his love of business, having determined to render the Trannis share of the Adelphi ollice a sleeping partnership, purchased a beautiful estate in the county of Kent. His chum, at the Tonbridge grammar-school, was the son of a certain Sir Ealph AVoodgate, of Stokeshill Place, near AVesterton; and Barnsley's spleen and cuvy had often been excited by his schoolfellow's vauntings of the Baronet's manorial rights, and the magnificence of the halls, parlours, paddocks, and preserves of Stokeshill Place. In the absence of some grounds for reciprocal boast, Stokeshill was a sharp thorn in Barnsley's side. He grew to consider it a finer thing than Eridge, Knowle, Penshurst, or even Windsor Castle ; and when, a few months after the opening of old Trannis's will, a newspaper advertisement acquainted him that the said estate of Stokeshill, with its manors, halls, parlours, paddocks, and preserves, was to be sold by private contract, Barnsley concluded his bargain for the long-coveted territory with such unattorneyish precipitancy, that the outlay of thirty-five thousand pounds was supposed to exceed the positive value of the purchase, by nearly fifteen hundred.

Even this extra expenditure, however, brought its rate of interest ; for young Mrs. Barnsley, so sad and so silent in London, recovered some degree of health and spirits from the moment of settling in the country. She, whose younglife had been droned away between a city and its suburbs, now tasted for the first time the enjoyment of fields and flowers, of shade and sunshine. The gardens and woods of Stokeshill seemed to animate her into new existence. She was almost well, — almost happy, — almost cheerful ; — and Mary's character had just begun to adapt itself to the mechanical routine of her new duties, when her innocent life was required of her ; she died in giving birth to a daughter ! —

Chapter III

The new proprietor of Stokeshill Place, to whom his young wife had been always Mrs. Barnsley, never Mary, and who respected her as the origin of his opulence, rather than as a being to be surrounded with the adoration which youthful bridegrooms lavish on such fair and gentle creatures, wore his broad hems with becoming gravity ; engaged an excellent nurse for his little girl ; and when the time for tuition came, sought out, as her governess, the favourite teacher under whose chaperonship he had first been presented to her mother. This was a sacrifice on the part of Barnsley. Seven years had elapsed since his first introduction to Miss Winston ; and he was now disencumbered of every domestic tie associated with that ignoble epoch. For five years past, he had been a country gentleman. His parents were dead, his sisters married, and all his Barnsley and Trannis connexions obliterated. He had formed new friendships and acquaintanceships, of a degree correspondent with his higher modes of life.

Yet it was not excess of virtue that induced him to overlook the disadvantage of introducing into his establishment, almost the only surviving person familiar with the rise of his condition. His honours had come to sit too closely upon him, and were based on too strong a foundation, to admit of the smallest solicitude as to his place in public opinion. His selection of his wife's teacher to become governess to her daughter, arose from his experience of the dry, sober, uninquiring, uninterfering, character of the elderly spinster ; and perhaps in some degree, from the hurried occupations which left him no leisure to seek out a more accomplished preceptress.

For Earnsley, in renouncing his professional business, seemed to have adapted that of all the world ! — Toung as he was, when he took possession of Stokeshill, he soon found himself to be the best man of business in the neighbourhood, and the neighbourhood confirmed his discovery. The habits of his clerkship clung to him. Vestry, quorum, electioneering,— he dealt with all and every thing like an attorney ; not interestedly, or unfairly, — but litigiously and pragmatically. The country gentlemen, his neighbours, respected him; some as a man of probity, — some as a man of five thousand a year. — They knew vaguely that he had been ' bred to the law ;' as were many men of fortune and family, fifty years ago, with a view to the legislation of their estates and the country ; and his legal knowledge and lawyer-like activity, both of pen and person, if they rendered him occasionally a troublesome neighbour, rendered him, in the long run, a very useful acquaintance.

I3y the time "Barnsley of Stokeshill had attained his fortyfifth year, the usual vicissitudes, brought about by the lapse of twenty years in every country neighbourhood, were perceptible in that of Westurton. 'Of the families which had

STOKESHILL TLACE. 17

witnessed his inauguration, some were dispersed, some extinct ; and in all but two instances, a new generation was reigning, in the stead of the one contemporaneous with his arrival at Stokeshill. Those who were later settlers in the county than himself, knew or cared little about the date of his naturalization ; and the three great lawgivers of the district, (Lord Shoreham, who, from his rank ; — old Holloway, who from his landed property; — and Sullivan who, from his antiquity of descent, might be suspected of cherishing disparaging sentiments towards the displacer of Sir Bichard Woodgate), found him far too useful a neighbour to be treated with disrespect.

In certain times and places, he was in fact invaluable. Assizes, elections, road-bill committees, and turnpike meetings, confessed his influence ; and, business apart, if indeed business could ever be a thing apart from Barnsley, he could boast good preserves on his manor, good wine in his cellar, a good understanding withthe gentlemen of the neighbouring hunt, and a good account with the bankers of the neighbouring town. FromWynnex Abbey down to Cinnamon Lodge, there was, accordingly, always a spare bed for Barnsley, — always a place at dinner parties for Barnsley — for Barnsley was a fellow who gave no trouble, and took infinite trouble for all the world. Had half the business he transacted, as an amateur at Stokeshill Place, been transacted in the John Doe and Richard Eoe line, in the office from which even his sleeping partnership was now bought out, Barnsley would have doubled his income, though perhaps at the expense of his popularity.

Little as people are inclined to receive advice volunteered as that of a friend, most men love a legal opinion which they can get for nothing ; and Barnsley's was known, by long experience, to be as good as the best to be had for money. Scarcely a country squire throughout England but has some pet lawsuit on his hands. In addition to his kinsfolk and acquaintance, tithes and tenants array against him new enemies for prosecution ; trespasses upon his grounds not being classed among those towards which he is enjoined to forgiveness by the canons of the Christian faith. But from the moment Barnsley settled himself in the hundred of "Westerton, all its outstanding aggressions and grievances

c

18 THE MAN OF BUSIHESS; OK,

became trebly apparent ; while others sprang daily to light, which had hitherto been microscopically undiscoverable. Pathways and causeways, rights of common and fishery, long abused and long neglected, were reclaimed and recovered under his auspices ; and as the adviser of such recoveries was known to derive no profit from the law, (though, as Closeman the wag of Westerton was heard to observe, he seemed to give the law to the profits,) he escaped the ignominy and ill-will usually attached to his vocation.

Many people were surprised that a man of so stirring a turn of mind, did not dignify his habits of activity by devoting them to the service of the country. But Barnsley had fixed his fancy upon a certain road into parliament, and no other afforded him the least temptation. As yet, reformed representation was not ; but Westerton was an open borough, displaying its openness like other boroughs of the time, by returning the two wealthiest landed proprietors within a certain distance of its town hall.

When Barnsley set up his staff at Stokeshill, the two sitting members were Holloway and Sullivan, both in the prime of life ; and the only hope of a vacancy consisted in the possibility of Mr. Holloway's elevation to the peerage ; or a breach between Sullivan and his constituents, occasioned by some outbreak of his haughty temper. Neither the one nor the other had yet occurred.

Still, Barnsley hoped on. Holloway and Sullivan, now styled in parlance of the borough, ' our old and respected members, ' were breaking up under the influence of sedentary committees and a parliamentary atmosphere ; and from session to session, from dissolution to dissolution, Barnsley's expectations of impending senatorship grew more distinct. Like some distant mansion forming at first a speck in the horizon, of which the progress of our journey makes gradually apparent the portico and windows, the door of the House of Commons seemed at length to stand open to John Barnsley, as ' the honourable member for Westerton.'

Tor the hundredth time, he complimented his own forbearance in having eschewed all other modes of sneaking into parliament. Not a dissolution for the last fifteen years, but he might have bought himself a seat with as much ease as one of the hall chairs of Stokeshill, cm which, per condescension of the Herald's Office, a lion's head had been lately made to figure. But he had shunned the temptation ; and preferred fulfilling towards old Holloway much such an office as that of coadjutor to a foreign archbishop, in order to keep up his interest with the borough. "Westerton was Barnsley's mark ! — Aut Westertoniensis aut nihil.

The secret of all this partiality — a secret unsuspected even by himself — consisted in his jealousy of his predecessors at Stokeshill. The "Woodgates had been ' seated,' according to the phrase of road-books and county histories, at Stokeshill Place, time out of mind ! In the reign of Kichard II. Sir Eanulph de Woodgate of Stokeshill, had inscribed his name, with a gauntletted hand, on the then iron page of history ; and the family had been connected one way or other with the chronicles of the county, throughout the five long grey-bearded centuries thence ensuing. An illfated race, — they had subsisted, rather than flourished. No change of kings or ministers, men or measures, seemed to bring prosperity to the "Woodgates. As jthe parchment of their genealogy extended, that of their rent-roll grew less. Their lauds were unrenewed by the manure of commercial gold ; and every new scion of the ancient tree beheld a wood or a farm sacrificed, on the shooting of his branch. At length, nothing of all their feofs and manors remained to them but the estate of Stokeshill. Sir Ralph, the father of John Barnsley's playmate, had scarcely a thousand a year, and several sons to claim a division of the income ; till, at last, soon after his attainment of his grandson's majority, the entail was of necessity cut off, the property sold ; — and lo ! John Barnsley reigned in his stead !

Some people were of opinion that necessity alone urged the son and grandson to the sacrifice ; but others imagined that the pride of the "Woodgates received a cruel blow in the loss of" a contested election for Westerton, experienced, some years before, by Mr. Woodgate. Trusting to the influence which in former times had invariably assigned a seat for the borough to the Stokeshill family, he had stood, and been defeated by Mr. Holloway — a comparatively new man in the county ; and though the high tory borough protested that its defection from the ancient banner arose from the leaning of Mr. Woodgate towards Catholic Emancipation,

c 2 the persons skilled in human nature and borough nature, were not slow to discover that the corporation could not afford to choose a representative residing in their immediate neighbourhood, having less than two thousand a year. They knew they should feast tipon old Holloway's venison, where Woodgate would scarcely have afforded them mutton ; and were aware that Holloway's pine apples would be mere pippins at Stokeshill. Nay, Hardingwood Holloway's name was down for an annual subscription to their infirmary of two hundred pounds ; when the six goodly heirs of the house of Woodgate mustered between them only 51. 5s.

The loss of the election, and the cause of the loss, were alike an offence to the humbled pride of the decayed family ; and, as the glory was departed from Stokeshill, the "Woodgates saw fit to depart also.

Nothing seemed easier or smoother, to uninterested bystanders, than the mode in which Mr. Barnsley had taken their place, by becoming, by fair and public purchase, proprietor of the estate ; yet he found plagues and perplexities in his instalment, of which the world knew nothing.

The village of Stokeshill, in former centuries a feof of the house of Woodgate, still retained an indelible impression of its supremacy. The place was full of the fame of their former greatness. The church boasted their sepulchral monuments ; the almshouses, the very fount in the market-place, their image and superscription. A hand holding a rose — the Lancasterian badge of old Sir Kanulph de Woodgate — was still the ensign of the little inn ; and certain invalided out-pensioned servants of the family, still haunted the spot, preserving in all their vividness, legends and memories of the past. Even the independent farmers of the neighbourhood, whose forefathers had gradually bought off their property from under the crumbling sceptre of the Woodgates, affected to uphold their empire, in opposition to the upstart, their successor. John Barnsley, the quondam attorney, might dine with Lord Shorcham, and shoot with Squire Sullivan ; but Giles Hawkins, of Loughlands Marsh, and Dick Abdy, of Woodman's farm, remained true to the rallying cry of ' Woodgate for ever.'

In short, though Barnsley's money had been the means of restoring comfort and respectability to the Woodgate family, and though he had never interchanged an ungi-acious word with any member of it in the course of his existence, he found himself detested at Stokeshill, as at once their enemy and an usurper !

The Woodgates were incessantly thrown iu his teeth. ' It was not so in the time of the good old family,' was constantly inflicted upon him. All the resistances and redressments suggested by his legal knowledge to the county at large, seemed retaliated upon himself in his own parish. A right of pathway across his lawn, which had been long suffered to fall into disuse, was now insisted upon by every red-hooded dame trudging with her basket of eggs to Westerton market ; and to all his concessions and remonstrances, the only answer he could obtain from Hawkins, Abdy, and their confederates, was :

' Yes, Mr. Barnsley, all that is very well ; but you see, Sir, though the old family mayn't have known as much of law as you do, they knew something of justice; and what's more, if they had proved grudgers to the poor, like some people, they wouldn't have been forced to make way at Stokeshill for folk as was never heard of, from Adam, in the county of Kent.'

All this was wormwood to Barnsley. The very name of Woodgate came to be hateful to his ears. If he bought a new horse, a whisper reached him that the Woodgates had a breeding stud of their own. If a new service of plate came down to him from town, what was it to the old family plate of the Woodgates ? A beautiful likeness of his daughter was hung up in the drawing-room at Stokeshill ; and he was soon afterwards informed by old Mr. Hawkins, that when the family pictures of the Woodgates were sold, previous to the disposal of the property, the Holbeinses had been bought for the gallery at Knowle, and the Vandykes for the King. He could not assume a taste, or affect a possession, but these hateful Woodgates had been beforehand with him !

Such was the motive which induced his earnest desire to become member of parliament for the borough of Westerton. There at least he might rise superior ! The last of the Woodgates had been rejected, where the first of the Barnsleys was likely to be joyfully accepted: — it was from him that Stokeshill would derive the honour of being designated as the seat of the member for Westerton :— the Hand and Flower must for once give place to the Lion's Head. Mighty as was the memory of the "Woodgates in the Stokeshill House of Industry, the name of John Barnsley would be greater still in His Majesty's House of Commons. A. baronetcy would have been no acquisition to him, their own being three centuries antedated ; the urgent point was, to be elected on the very hustings where Eichard "Woodgate nad been lag of tbe poll !