The Wrecker

R >> Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne >> The Wrecker


When I was first guided into the exchange to have my desk pointed out
by one of the assistant teachers, I was overwhelmed by the clamour and
confusion. Certain blackboards at the other end of the building were
covered with figures continually replaced. As each new set appeared, the
pupils swayed to and fro, and roared out aloud with a formidable and
to me quite meaningless vociferation; leaping at the same time upon
the desks and benches, signalling with arms and heads, and scribbling
briskly in note-books. I thought I had never beheld a scene more
disagreeable; and when I considered that the whole traffic was illusory,
and all the money then upon the market would scarce have sufficed to
buy a pair of skates, I was at first astonished, although not for long.
Indeed, I had no sooner called to mind how grown-up men and women of
considerable estate will lose their temper about half-penny points, than
(making an immediate allowance for my fellow-students) I transferred
the whole of my astonishment to the assistant teacher, who--poor
gentleman--had quite forgot to show me to my desk, and stood in the
midst of this hurly-burly, absorbed and seemingly transported.

"Look, look," he shouted in my ear; "a falling market! The bears have
had it all their own way since yesterday."

"It can't matter," I replied, making him hear with difficulty, for I was
unused to speak in such a babel, "since it is all fun."

"True," said he; "and you must always bear in mind that the real profit
is in the book-keeping. I trust, Dodd, to be able to congratulate
you upon your books. You are to start in with ten thousand dollars of
college paper, a very liberal figure, which should see you through the
whole curriculum, if you keep to a safe, conservative business.... Why,
what's that?" he broke off, once more attracted by the changing figures
on the board. "Seven, four, three! Dodd, you are in luck: this is the
most spirited rally we have had this term. And to think that the same
scene is now transpiring in New York, Chicago, St. Louis, and rival
business centres! For two cents, I would try a flutter with the
boys myself," he cried, rubbing his hands; "only it's against the
regulations."

"What would you do, sir?" I asked.

"Do?" he cried, with glittering eyes. "Buy for all I was worth!"

"Would that be a safe, conservative business?" I inquired, as innocent
as a lamb.

He looked daggers at me. "See that sandy-haired man in glasses?" he
asked, as if to change the subject. "That's Billson, our most prominent
undergraduate. We build confidently on Billson's future. You could not
do better, Dodd, than follow Billson."

Presently after, in the midst of a still growing tumult, the figures
coming and going more busily than ever on the board, and the hall
resounding like Pandemonium with the howls of operators, the assistant
teacher left me to my own resources at my desk. The next boy was posting
up his ledger, figuring his morning's loss, as I discovered later on;
and from this ungenial task he was readily diverted by the sight of a
new face.

"Say, Freshman," he said, "what's your name? What? Son of Big Head Dodd?
What's your figure? Ten thousand? O, you're away up! What a soft-headed
clam you must be to touch your books!"

I asked him what else I could do, since the books were to be examined
once a month.

"Why, you galoot, you get a clerk!" cries he. "One of our dead
beats--that's all they're here for. If you're a successful operator, you
need never do a stroke of work in this old college."

The noise had now become deafening; and my new friend, telling me that
some one had certainly "gone down," that he must know the news, and
that he would bring me a clerk when he returned, buttoned his coat and
plunged into the tossing throng. It proved that he was right: some one
had gone down; a prince had fallen in Israel; the corner in lard had
proved fatal to the mighty; and the clerk who was brought back to keep
my books, spare me all work, and get all my share of the education, at
a thousand dollars a month, college paper (ten dollars, United States
currency) was no other than the prominent Billson whom I could do no
better than follow. The poor lad was very unhappy. It's the only good
thing I have to say for Muskegon Commercial College, that we were all,
even the small fry, deeply mortified to be posted as defaulters; and the
collapse of a merchant prince like Billson, who had ridden pretty high
in his days of prosperity, was, of course, particularly hard to bear.
But the spirit of make-believe conquered even the bitterness of recent
shame; and my clerk took his orders, and fell to his new duties, with
decorum and civility.

Such were my first impressions in this absurd place of education; and,
to be frank, they were far from disagreeable. As long as I was rich, my
evenings and afternoons would be my own; the clerk must keep my books,
the clerk could do the jostling and bawling in the exchange; and I could
turn my mind to landscape-painting and Balzac's novels, which were then
my two preoccupations. To remain rich, then, became my problem; or, in
other words, to do a safe, conservative line of business. I am looking
for that line still; and I believe the nearest thing to it in this
imperfect world is the sort of speculation sometimes insidiously
proposed to childhood, in the formula, "Heads, I win; tails, you lose."
Mindful of my father's parting words, I turned my attention timidly to
railroads; and for a month or so maintained a position of inglorious
security, dealing for small amounts in the most inert stocks, and
bearing (as best I could) the scorn of my hired clerk. One day I
had ventured a little further by way of experiment; and, in the sure
expectation they would continue to go down, sold several thousand
dollars of Pan-Handle Preference (I think it was). I had no sooner
made this venture than some fools in New York began to bull the market;
Pan-Handles rose like a balloon; and in the inside of half an hour I saw
my position compromised. Blood will tell, as my father said; and I stuck
to it gallantly: all afternoon I continued selling that infernal
stock, all afternoon it continued skying. I suppose I had come (a frail
cockle-shell) athwart the hawse of Jay Gould; and, indeed, I think I
remember that this vagary in the market proved subsequently to be the
first move in a considerable deal. That evening, at least, the name of
H. Loudon Dodd held the first rank in our collegiate gazette, and I and
Billson (once more thrown upon the world) were competing for the same
clerkship. The present object takes the present eye. My disaster,
for the moment, was the more conspicuous; and it was I that got the
situation. So you see, even in Muskegon Commercial College, there were
lessons to be learned.

For my own part, I cared very little whether I lost or won at a game so
random, so complex, and so dull; but it was sorry news to write to my
poor father, and I employed all the resources of my eloquence. I told
him (what was the truth) that the successful boys had none of the
education; so that if he wished me to learn, he should rejoice at my
misfortune. I went on (not very consistently) to beg him to set me up
again, when I would solemnly promise to do a safe business in reliable
railroads. Lastly (becoming somewhat carried away), I assured him I was
totally unfit for business, and implored him to take me away from this
abominable place, and let me go to Paris to study art. He answered
briefly, gently, and sadly, telling me the vacation was near at hand,
when we could talk things over.

When the time came, he met me at the depot, and I was shocked to see
him looking older. He seemed to have no thought but to console me
and restore (what he supposed I had lost) my courage. I must not be
down-hearted; many of the best men had made a failure in the beginning.
I told him I had no head for business, and his kind face darkened. "You
must not say that, Loudon," he replied; "I will never believe my son to
be a coward."

"But I don't like it," I pleaded. "It hasn't got any interest for me,
and art has. I know I could do more in art," and I reminded him that
a successful painter gains large sums; that a picture of Meissonier's
would sell for many thousand dollars.

"And do you think, Loudon," he replied, "that a man who can paint a
thousand dollar picture has not grit enough to keep his end up in
the stock market? No, sir; this Mason (of whom you speak) or our
own American Bierstadt--if you were to put them down in a wheat pit
to-morrow, they would show their mettle. Come, Loudon, my dear; heaven
knows I have no thought but your own good, and I will offer you a
bargain. I start you again next term with ten thousand dollars; show
yourself a man, and double it, and then (if you still wish to go to
Paris, which I know you won't) I'll let you go. But to let you run away
as if you were whipped, is what I am too proud to do."

My heart leaped at this proposal, and then sank again. It seemed easier
to paint a Meissonier on the spot than to win ten thousand dollars
on that mimic stock exchange. Nor could I help reflecting on the
singularity of such a test for a man's capacity to be a painter. I
ventured even to comment on this.

He sighed deeply. "You forget, my dear," said he, "I am a judge of
the one, and not of the other. You might have the genius of Bierstadt
himself, and I would be none the wiser."

"And then," I continued, "it's scarcely fair. The other boys are helped
by their people, who telegraph and give them pointers. There's Jim
Costello, who never budges without a word from his father in New York.
And then, don't you see, if anybody is to win, somebody must lose?"

"I'll keep you posted," cried my father, with unusual animation; "I did
not know it was allowed. I'll wire you in the office cipher, and we'll
make it a kind of partnership business, Loudon:--Dodd & Son, eh?" and
he patted my shoulder and repeated, "Dodd & Son, Dodd & Son," with the
kindliest amusement.

If my father was to give me pointers, and the commercial college was to
be a stepping-stone to Paris, I could look my future in the face. The
old boy, too, was so pleased at the idea of our association in this
foolery that he immediately plucked up spirit. Thus it befell that those
who had met at the depot like a pair of mutes, sat down to table with
holiday faces.

And now I have to introduce a new character that never said a word nor
wagged a finger, and yet shaped my whole subsequent career. You have
crossed the States, so that in all likelihood you have seen the head
of it, parcel-gilt and curiously fluted, rising among trees from a wide
plain; for this new character was no other than the State capitol of
Muskegon, then first projected. My father had embraced the idea with a
mixture of patriotism and commercial greed both perfectly genuine. He
was of all the committees, he had subscribed a great deal of money, and
he was making arrangements to have a finger in most of the contracts.
Competitive plans had been sent in; at the time of my return from
college my father was deep in their consideration; and as the idea
entirely occupied his mind, the first evening did not pass away before
he had called me into council. Here was a subject at last into which I
could throw myself with pleasurable zeal. Architecture was new to me,
indeed; but it was at least an art; and for all the arts I had a taste
naturally classical and that capacity to take delighted pains which some
famous idiot has supposed to be synonymous with genius. I threw myself
headlong into my father's work, acquainted myself with all the plans,
their merits and defects, read besides in special books, made myself
a master of the theory of strains, studied the current prices
of materials, and (in one word) "devilled" the whole business so
thoroughly, that when the plans came up for consideration, Big Head Dodd
was supposed to have earned fresh laurels. His arguments carried the
day, his choice was approved by the committee, and I had the anonymous
satisfaction to know that arguments and choice were wholly mine. In the
recasting of the plan which followed, my part was even larger; for I
designed and cast with my own hand a hot-air grating for the offices,
which had the luck or merit to be accepted. The energy and aptitude
which I displayed throughout delighted and surprised my father, and I
believe, although I say it whose tongue should be tied, that they alone
prevented Muskegon capitol from being the eyesore of my native State.

Altogether, I was in a cheery frame of mind when I returned to the
commercial college; and my earlier operations were crowned with a full
measure of success. My father wrote and wired to me continually. "You
are to exercise your own judgment, Loudon," he would say. "All that I do
is to give you the figures; but whatever operation you take up must be
upon your own responsibility, and whatever you earn will be entirely
due to your own dash and forethought." For all that, it was always clear
what he intended me to do, and I was always careful to do it. Inside
of a month I was at the head of seventeen or eighteen thousand dollars,
college paper. And here I fell a victim to one of the vices of the
system. The paper (I have already explained) had a real value of one
per cent; and cost, and could be sold for, currency. Unsuccessful
speculators were thus always selling clothes, books, banjos, and
sleeve-links, in order to pay their differences; the successful, on the
other hand, were often tempted to realise, and enjoy some return upon
their profits. Now I wanted thirty dollars' worth of artist-truck, for
I was always sketching in the woods; my allowance was for the time
exhausted; I had begun to regard the exchange (with my father's help)
as a place where money was to be got for stooping; and in an evil hour
I realised three thousand dollars of the college paper and bought my
easel.

It was a Wednesday morning when the things arrived, and set me in
the seventh heaven of satisfaction. My father (for I can scarcely say
myself) was trying at this time a "straddle" in wheat between Chicago
and New York; the operation so called is, as you know, one of the
most tempting and least safe upon the chess-board of finance. On the
Thursday, luck began to turn against my father's calculations; and by
the Friday evening, I was posted on the boards as a defaulter for the
second time. Here was a rude blow: my father would have taken it ill
enough in any case; for however much a man may resent the incapacity of
an only son, he will feel his own more sensibly. But it chanced that, in
our bitter cup of failure, there was one ingredient that might truly be
called poisonous. He had been keeping the run of my position; he missed
the three thousand dollars, paper; and in his view, I had stolen thirty
dollars, currency. It was an extreme view perhaps; but in some senses,
it was just: and my father, although (to my judgment) quite reckless of
honesty in the essence of his operations, was the soul of honour as to
their details. I had one grieved letter from him, dignified and tender;
and during the rest of that wretched term, working as a clerk, selling
my clothes and sketches to make futile speculations, my dream of Paris
quite vanished. I was cheered by no word of kindness and helped by no
hint of counsel from my father.

All the time he was no doubt thinking of little else but his son, and
what to do with him. I believe he had been really appalled by what he
regarded as my laxity of principle, and began to think it might be
well to preserve me from temptation; the architect of the capitol had,
besides, spoken obligingly of my design; and while he was thus hanging
between two minds, Fortune suddenly stepped in, and Muskegon State
capitol reversed my destiny.

"Loudon," said my father, as he met me at the depot, with a smiling
countenance, "if you were to go to Paris, how long would it take you to
become an experienced sculptor?"

"How do you mean, father?" I cried. "Experienced?"

"A man that could be entrusted with the highest styles," he answered;
"the nude, for instance; and the patriotic and emblematical styles."

"It might take three years," I replied.

"You think Paris necessary?" he asked. "There are great advantages
in our own country; and that man Prodgers appears to be a very clever
sculptor, though I suppose he stands too high to go around giving
lessons."

"Paris is the only place," I assured him.

"Well, I think myself it will sound better," he admitted. "A Young Man,
a Native of this State, Son of a Leading Citizen, Studies Prosecuted
under the Most Experienced Masters in Paris," he added, relishingly.

"But, my dear dad, what is it all about?" I interrupted. "I never even
dreamed of being a sculptor."

"Well, here it is," said he. "I took up the statuary contract on our new
capitol; I took it up at first as a deal; and then it occurred to me it
would be better to keep it in the family. It meets your idea; there's
considerable money in the thing; and it's patriotic. So, if you say the
word, you shall go to Paris, and come back in three years to decorate
the capitol of your native State. It's a big chance for you, Loudon; and
I'll tell you what--every dollar you earn, I'll put another alongside of
it. But the sooner you go, and the harder you work, the better; for
if the first half-dozen statues aren't in a line with public taste in
Muskegon, there will be trouble."




CHAPTER II. ROUSSILLON WINE.


My mother's family was Scotch, and it was judged fitting I should pay a
visit on my way Paris-ward, to my Uncle Adam Loudon, a wealthy retired
grocer of Edinburgh. He was very stiff and very ironical; he fed me
well, lodged me sumptuously, and seemed to take it out of me all the
time, cent per cent, in secret entertainment which caused his spectacles
to glitter and his mouth to twitch. The ground of this ill-suppressed
mirth (as well as I could make out) was simply the fact that I was an
American. "Well," he would say, drawing out the word to infinity, "and
I suppose now in your country, things will be so and so." And the whole
group of my cousins would titter joyously. Repeated receptions of
this sort must be at the root, I suppose, of what they call the Great
American Jest; and I know I was myself goaded into saying that my
friends went naked in the summer months, and that the Second Methodist
Episcopal Church in Muskegon was decorated with scalps. I cannot say
that these flights had any great success; they seemed to awaken little
more surprise than the fact that my father was a Republican or that I
had been taught in school to spell COLOUR without the U. If I had
told them (what was after all the truth) that my father had paid a
considerable annual sum to have me brought up in a gambling hell, the
tittering and grinning of this dreadful family might perhaps have been
excused.

I cannot deny but I was sometimes tempted to knock my Uncle Adam down;
and indeed I believe it must have come to a rupture at last, if they had
not given a dinner party at which I was the lion. On this occasion, I
learned (to my surprise and relief) that the incivility to which I had
been subjected was a matter for the family circle and might be regarded
almost in the light of an endearment. To strangers I was presented with
consideration; and the account given of "my American brother-in-law,
poor Janie's man, James K. Dodd, the well-known millionnaire of
Muskegon," was calculated to enlarge the heart of a proud son.

An aged assistant of my grandfather's, a pleasant, humble creature with
a taste for whiskey, was at first deputed to be my guide about the city.
With this harmless but hardly aristocratic companion, I went to Arthur's
Seat and the Calton Hill, heard the band play in the Princes Street
Gardens, inspected the regalia and the blood of Rizzio, and fell in love
with the great castle on its cliff, the innumerable spires of churches,
the stately buildings, the broad prospects, and those narrow and crowded
lanes of the old town where my ancestors had lived and died in the days
before Columbus.

But there was another curiosity that interested me more deeply--my
grandfather, Alexander Loudon. In his time, the old gentleman had been a
working mason, and had risen from the ranks more, I think, by shrewdness
than by merit. In his appearance, speech, and manners, he bore broad
marks of his origin, which were gall and wormwood to my Uncle Adam.
His nails, in spite of anxious supervision, were often in conspicuous
mourning; his clothes hung about him in bags and wrinkles like a
ploughman's Sunday coat; his accent was rude, broad, and dragging: take
him at his best, and even when he could be induced to hold his tongue,
his mere presence in a corner of the drawing-room, with his open-air
wrinkles, his scanty hair, his battered hands, and the cheerful
craftiness of his expression, advertised the whole gang of us for a
self-made family. My aunt might mince and my cousins bridle; but there
was no getting over the solid, physical fact of the stonemason in the
chimney-corner.

That is one advantage of being an American: it never occurred to me to
be ashamed of my grandfather, and the old gentleman was quick to mark
the difference. He held my mother in tender memory, perhaps because
he was in the habit of daily contrasting her with Uncle Adam, whom he
detested to the point of frenzy; and he set down to inheritance from
his favourite my own becoming treatment of himself. On our walks abroad,
which soon became daily, he would sometimes (after duly warning me
to keep the matter dark from "Aadam") skulk into some old familiar
pot-house; and there (if he had the luck to encounter any of his veteran
cronies) he would present me to the company with manifest pride, casting
at the same time a covert slur on the rest of his descendants. "This is
my Jeannie's yin," he would say. "He's a fine fallow, him." The purpose
of our excursions was not to seek antiquities or to enjoy famous
prospects, but to visit one after another a series of doleful suburbs,
for which it was the old gentleman's chief claim to renown that he had
been the sole contractor, and too often the architect besides. I have
rarely seen a more shocking exhibition: the bricks seemed to be blushing
in the walls, and the slates on the roof to have turned pale with shame;
but I was careful not to communicate these impressions to the aged
artificer at my side; and when he would direct my attention to some
fresh monstrosity--perhaps with the comment, "There's an idee of mine's:
it's cheap and tasty, and had a graand run; the idee was soon stole, and
there's whole deestricts near Glesgie with the goathic adeetion and
that plunth,"--I would civilly make haste to admire and (what I found
particularly delighted him) to inquire into the cost of each adornment.
It will be conceived that Muskegon capitol was a frequent and a welcome
ground of talk; I drew him all the plans from memory; and he, with the
aid of a narrow volume full of figures and tables, which answered
(I believe) to the name of Molesworth, and was his constant pocket
companion, would draw up rough estimates and make imaginary offers on
the various contracts. Our Muskegon builders he pronounced a pack of
cormorants; and the congenial subject, together with my knowledge of
architectural terms, the theory of strains, and the prices of materials
in the States, formed a strong bond of union between what might have
been otherwise an ill-assorted pair, and led my grandfather to pronounce
me, with emphasis, "a real intalligent kind of a cheild." Thus a second
time, as you will presently see, the capitol of my native State had
influentially affected the current of my life.

I left Edinburgh, however, with not the least idea that I had done a
stroke of excellent business for myself, and singly delighted to escape
out of a somewhat dreary house and plunge instead into the rainbow city
of Paris. Every man has his own romance; mine clustered exclusively
about the practice of the arts, the life of Latin Quarter students, and
the world of Paris as depicted by that grimy wizard, the author of the
_Comedie Humaine_. I was not disappointed--I could not have been; for
I did not see the facts, I brought them with me ready-made. Z. Marcas
lived next door to me in my ungainly, ill-smelling hotel of the Rue
Racine; I dined at my villainous restaurant with Lousteau and with
Rastignac: if a curricle nearly ran me down at a street-crossing, Maxime
de Trailles would be the driver. I dined, I say, at a poor restaurant
and lived in a poor hotel; and this was not from need, but sentiment.
My father gave me a profuse allowance, and I might have lived (had I
chosen) in the Quartier de l'Etoile and driven to my studies daily.
Had I done so, the glamour must have fled: I should still have been
but Loudon Dodd; whereas now I was a Latin Quarter student, Murger's
successor, living in flesh and blood the life of one of those romances
I had loved to read, to re-read, and to dream over, among the woods of
Muskegon.