CHAPTER XVI.
MAY BE SAID TO INAUGURATE A SERIES OF IMPORTANT
CHANGES IN THE LIVES OF SEVERAL NOTABLE PERSONS IN THIS
HISTORY.
The financial storm had been but little felt, you see, at Barton Hall, or Mr. and Mrs. Somerton would no doubt have said something about it in the conversation which is set down in the previous chapter.
Phœbe Tallant and her friend, Miss Somerton, had read of it in the daily papers, which arrived in a special parcel from Smith & Sons every day at the nearest railway station, where a groom was in waiting for them. But Phœbe and Amy knew little or nothing about panics. It was to them very much like what it was to the boy,—“something in the City.” Miss Tallant’s clever governess, however, knew a great deal about a Panic, which she seemed to stroke and pat on the back in her intellectual superiority.
They little knew how seriously such a storm might affect the master of Barton Hall. It had already demolished more than one or two establishments of nearly equal importance; but Mr. Tallant was particularly strong in the back, as they say in the City, and it was well for him that such was the case, as was speedily exemplified soon after the first shock of the panic had vibrated throughout the country.
On the very day after the clever governess’s description of a panic, the half-yearly meeting of the Eastern Banking Company (of which Mr. Tallant was chairman, and his son a director) was held at the London Tavern.
At about two o’clock quite a little crowd of anxious-looking people ascended the stone staircase, and entered that long room with the misty looking pictures in it and the great chandelier.
Some of the men were talking in loud whispers about the losses of the company and its evident mismanagement. There appeared to be a general feeling prevailing that it would be an awkward day for the directors. But this was no novelty at that time for directors of many other concerns. Gentlemen who had been working for years up to directorships, and some of whom had thought it necessary to obtain seats in the House of Commons, with a leading idea in this direction, now began to find that there were two sides to the directoral picture.
The time had been when a gentleman could materially augment his income by having a seat at various boards of management; the time had been when he not only got thereby a first-rate investment for the nominal sum which gave him the qualification for certain directorates, but when his social and commercial position were largely exalted by these appointments. But directors at this period, with a commercial panic in the City and throughout the kingdom, began to find their seats full of thorns, and pins, and needles, and everything but curled hair and feathers.
Shareholders in almost every shaky concern were down upon the directors, and in many instances very properly so; for gentlemen of repute, honourable men hitherto, had been weak enough to append their names to prospectuses and statements which they knew little or nothing about; and in some cases this was knavishly and cruelly done,—knavishly and cruelly, because honest and industrious people were induced to invest hard-earned savings in rotten schemes made to look safe by the names of the gentlemen who figured as directors. Sir This, and the Hon. the Other, Lord That, and Mr. This, M.P. for so-and-so, did not scruple to lend their names to designing villains who plundered the public behind these swellmarks, and in more than one case Sir This and Mr. That did not scruple to go shares in the booty.
So you see the times were rather out of joint for directorships, and many eminent City and country gentlemen would have been rejoiced could they all at once have quietly retired from their several boards of management without inquiry or explanation. Mr. Richard Tallant could have told you of several safes where shares and scrip had been lately locked away by strong-backed men with a firm resolution not to look into those safes for many months to come. Some of these shares had been bought at heavy premiums, and now all that remained were the frightful responsibilities which attached to them. But there always had been panics, people said, and there always would be; and there always have been financial wreckers and sharpers to take advantage of monetary storms, and will be until the end.
The half-yearly report stated that a loss of 100,000l. had fallen upon the Bombay branch; but this was by no means the worst feature in the affair, according to the views of the shareholders. Their shares, 100l. paid up, were quoted on the Stock Exchange at 5l. 10s.
The chairman explained that there was no bonâ fide reason for this, the bank being not only solvent, but having 150,000l. to the good, and better advices were expected from India.
Mr. Tallant’s was a long, clear, and honest statement, but it did not allay the storm of abuse which had been prepared for the directory.
One speaker called for the resignation of the chairman, and was applauded; another condemned the directory as a body, called upon them all to resign; another fell foul of the auditors; another said the managers of the branches were evidently a set of incompetent men, put in by favouritism.
By-and-by the first speaker, a City man of repute, and famous amongst companies as a financial orator, alluded to the fall in their shares, and attributed the depreciation to the conduct of one of the shareholders.
“Yes, gentlemen,” he said, “one of our own firm,—one of our partners in this great concern,—has not only been the chief means of running the shares down, but he has profited by it; he has sold shares which do not exist, and bought those which timid people have thrown upon the market; he has borrowed shares for the purpose of depreciation, and——”
The speaker was interrupted for a moment by cries of “Name! name!” but he was an orator, and he had more to say before he had worked up his theme to the grand climax of naming the victim, whom he was pinning down with his long rhetorical lance.
“Gentlemen, this speculator—to call him by a mild name—is one of a very small but dangerous set of men, who have been engaged in rigging the market and damaging great and flourishing concerns—like wreckers, putting out false lights, and then plundering the unhappy mariners.”
Cries of “Shame!” and “Name!” and “Swindler!” interrupted the speaker, who waved his hand for silence.
“I had hoped to have seen this gentleman here to-day; he ought to have been amongst us; I gave him notice that I should be here.”
This elicited a cry of “Bravo!” and then the chairman rose to deprecate personalities. He feared the honorable proprietor was losing his discretion by excitement.
“Not so, Mr. Chairman,” replied the honorable proprietor. “I am not speaking on the spur of the moment: my words are not born of mere excitement, sir. I have thought much and deeply about the remarks I am now making; nay more, I have taken advice upon them—they have gone through the legal crucible. (Cheers, “Bravo!” and confusion.) It is exceedingly hurtful to my own feelings to bring so painful a subject before this meeting, but I am prepared to sacrifice self, upon an occasion of this kind, to public duty.”
“Hear, hear!” said several shareholders, whilst others murmured “Quite right.”
“I have ample proof of the charge which I am making; and shall I not for the credit and honour and safety of the trading community of this great city, in a time of such financial danger, unmask the dastard before the eyes of the world?”
“Yes, yes!” and “Name! name!” cried a hundred voices; whilst a pair of stentorian lungs shouted, from the gallery at the extreme end of the room, “Why the deuce don’t you do it?”
In the midst of the hubbub a grave, pale-faced gentleman rose and said this kind of discussion had gone far enough. He wanted to know the exact position of the bank.
“Hear, hear!” shouted several shareholders close by; whilst others could not help laughing at this bit of clerical impracticability, seeing that the report stated the position of the bank, and the chairman’s address had been furthermore elucidatory.
The chairman rose to order, and was greeted with cries of “Sit down!” “Don’t interfere!” “Let us have the name!”
Meanwhile the financial orator stood, paper in hand, calmly contemplating the scene, and half-a-dozen other persons rose to speak, including the poor parson, who had been induced to invest all his money in this bank, chiefly on account of its classical connection with the East.
“I insist upon knowing the position of the bank,” said the reverend gentleman, but his earnestness only raised a loud laugh.
“I fail to see the humorous side of my question,” said the poor man, thinking of his wife and four little ones at the small rectory in Yorkshire. “Is this bank solvent, or is it not? Is it going to break? What is its position?”
Laughter, cheers, and cries of “Bosh!” and “Go on with the meeting!” soon induced the poor rector to sit down, and then the financial orator said he would resume the case at the point where he had been interrupted.
“Name! name!” the shareholders cried, and several directors at length grew sufficiently excited to join in the chorus; but the financial orator begged to be permitted to explain the whole case before complying with the general request; and whilst he is gradually “piling up the agony,” and drifting into his telling peroration, we propose to conduct you to an adjacent police court, where another extraordinary scene is being enacted.
We can return and pick up the “name” which the honorable proprietor has been asked for so frequently.