Martin Chuzzlewit
‘Not such an old hand, either, but that I’ve been and got married.
That’s rather green, you’ll say. Perhaps it is, especially as she’s
young. But one never knows what may happen to these women, so I’m
thinking of insuring her life. It is but fair, you know, that a man
should secure some consolation in case of meeting with such a loss.’
‘If anything can console him under such heart-breaking circumstances,’
murmured Tigg, with his eyes shut up as before.
‘Exactly,’ returned Jonas; ‘if anything can. Now, supposing I did it
here, I should do it cheap, I know, and easy, without bothering her
about it; which I’d much rather not do, for it’s just in a woman’s way
to take it into her head, if you talk to her about such things, that
she’s going to die directly.’
‘So it is,’ cried Tigg, kissing his hand in honour of the sex. ‘You’re
quite right. Sweet, silly, fluttering little simpletons!’
‘Well,’ said Jonas, ‘on that account, you know, and because offence
has been given me in other quarters, I wouldn’t mind patronizing this
Company. But I want to know what sort of security there is for the
Company’s going on. That’s the--’
‘Not the truth?’ cried Tigg, holding up his jewelled hand. ‘Don’t use
that Sunday School expression, please!’
‘The long and the short of it,’ said Jonas. ‘The long and the short of
it is, what’s the security?’
‘The paid-up capital, my dear sir,’ said Tigg, referring to some papers
on the table, ‘is, at this present moment--’
‘Oh! I understand all about paid-up capitals, you know,’ said Jonas.
‘You do?’ cried Tigg, stopping short.
‘I should hope so.’
He turned the papers down again, and moving nearer to him, said in his
ear:
‘I know you do. I know you do. Look at me!’
It was not much in Jonas’s way to look straight at anybody; but thus
requested, he made shift to take a tolerable survey of the chairman’s
features. The chairman fell back a little, to give him the better
opportunity.
‘You know me?’ he inquired, elevating his eyebrows. ‘You recollect?
You’ve seen me before?’
‘Why, I thought I remembered your face when I first came in,’ said
Jonas, gazing at it; ‘but I couldn’t call to mind where I had seen it.
No. I don’t remember, even now. Was it in the street?’
‘Was it in Pecksniff’s parlour?’ said Tigg
‘In Pecksniff’s parlour!’ echoed Jonas, fetching a long breath. ‘You
don’t mean when--’
‘Yes,’ cried Tigg, ‘when there was a very charming and delightful little
family party, at which yourself and your respected father assisted.’
‘Well, never mind HIM,’ said Jonas. ‘He’s dead, and there’s no help for
it.’
‘Dead, is he!’ cried Tigg, ‘Venerable old gentleman, is he dead! You’re
very like him.’
Jonas received this compliment with anything but a good grace, perhaps
because of his own private sentiments in reference to the personal
appearance of his deceased parent; perhaps because he was not best
pleased to find that Montague and Tigg were one. That gentleman
perceived it, and tapping him familiarly on the sleeve, beckoned him
to the window. From this moment, Mr Montague’s jocularity and flow of
spirits were remarkable.
‘Do you find me at all changed since that time?’ he asked. ‘Speak
plainly.’
Jonas looked hard at his waistcoat and jewels; and said ‘Rather, ecod!’
‘Was I at all seedy in those days?’ asked Montague.
‘Precious seedy,’ said Jonas.
Mr Montague pointed down into the street, where Bailey and the cab were
in attendance.
‘Neat; perhaps dashing. Do you know whose it is?’
‘No.’
‘Mine. Do you like this room?’
‘It must have cost a lot of money,’ said Jonas.
‘You’re right. Mine too. Why don’t you’--he whispered this, and nudged
him in the side with his elbow--‘why don’t you take premiums, instead of
paying ‘em? That’s what a man like you should do. Join us!’
Jonas stared at him in amazement.
‘Is that a crowded street?’ asked Montague, calling his attention to the
multitude without.
‘Very,’ said Jonas, only glancing at it, and immediately afterwards
looking at him again.
‘There are printed calculations,’ said his companion, ‘which will
tell you pretty nearly how many people will pass up and down that
thoroughfare in the course of a day. I can tell you how many of ‘em will
come in here, merely because they find this office here; knowing no more
about it than they do of the Pyramids. Ha, ha! Join us. You shall come
in cheap.’
Jonas looked at him harder and harder.
‘I can tell you,’ said Tigg in his ear, ‘how many of ‘em will buy
annuities, effect insurances, bring us their money in a hundred shapes
and ways, force it upon us, trust us as if we were the Mint; yet know no
more about us than you do of that crossing-sweeper at the corner. Not so
much. Ha, ha!’
Jonas gradually broke into a smile.
‘Yah!’ said Montague, giving him a pleasant thrust in the breast;
‘you’re too deep for us, you dog, or I wouldn’t have told you. Dine with
me to-morrow, in Pall Mall!’
‘I will’ said Jonas.
‘Done!’ cried Montague. ‘Wait a bit. Take these papers with you and look
‘em over. See,’ he said, snatching some printed forms from the table. ‘B
is a little tradesman, clerk, parson, artist, author, any common thing
you like.’
‘Yes,’ said Jonas, looking greedily over his shoulder. ‘Well!’
‘B wants a loan. Say fifty or a hundred pound; perhaps more; no matter.
B proposes self and two securities. B is accepted. Two securities give
a bond. B assures his own life for double the amount, and brings two
friends’ lives also--just to patronize the office. Ha ha, ha! Is that a
good notion?’
‘Ecod, that’s a capital notion!’ cried Jonas. ‘But does he really do
it?’
‘Do it!’ repeated the chairman. ‘B’s hard up, my good fellow, and will
do anything. Don’t you see? It’s my idea.’
‘It does you honour. I’m blest if it don’t,’ said Jonas.
‘I think it does,’ replied the chairman, ‘and I’m proud to hear you say
so. B pays the highest lawful interest--’
‘That an’t much,’ interrupted Jonas.
‘Right! quite right!’ retorted Tigg. ‘And hard it is upon the part
of the law that it should be so confoundedly down upon us unfortunate
victims; when it takes such amazing good interest for itself from all
its clients. But charity begins at home, and justice begins next door.
Well! The law being hard upon us, we’re not exactly soft upon B; for
besides charging B the regular interest, we get B’s premium, and B’s
friends’ premiums, and we charge B for the bond, and, whether we accept
him or not, we charge B for “inquiries” (we keep a man, at a pound a
week, to make ‘em), and we charge B a trifle for the secretary; and in
short, my good fellow, we stick it into B, up hill and down dale, and
make a devilish comfortable little property out of him. Ha, ha, ha! I
drive B, in point of fact,’ said Tigg, pointing to the cabriolet, ‘and a
thoroughbred horse he is. Ha, ha, ha!’
Jonas enjoyed this joke very much indeed. It was quite in his peculiar
vein of humour.
‘Then,’ said Tigg Montague, ‘we grant annuities on the very lowest and
most advantageous terms known in the money market; and the old ladies
and gentlemen down in the country buy ‘em. Ha, ha, ha! And we pay ‘em
too--perhaps. Ha, ha, ha!’
‘But there’s responsibility in that,’ said Jonas, looking doubtful.
‘I take it all myself,’ said Tigg Montague. ‘Here I am responsible for
everything. The only responsible person in the establishment! Ha,
ha, ha! Then there are the Life Assurances without loans; the common
policies. Very profitable, very comfortable. Money down, you know;
repeated every year; capital fun!’
‘But when they begin to fall in,’ observed Jonas. ‘It’s all very well,
while the office is young, but when the policies begin to die--that’s
what I am thinking of.’
‘At the first start, my dear fellow,’ said Montague, ‘to show you how
correct your judgment is, we had a couple of unlucky deaths that brought
us down to a grand piano.’
‘Brought you down where?’ cried Jonas.
‘I give you my sacred word of honour,’ said Tigg Montague, ‘that I
raised money on every other individual piece of property, and was left
alone in the world with a grand piano. And it was an upright-grand too,
so that I couldn’t even sit upon it. But, my dear fellow, we got over
it. We granted a great many new policies that week (liberal allowance
to solicitors, by the bye), and got over it in no time. Whenever they
should chance to fall in heavily, as you very justly observe they may,
one of these days; then--’ he finished the sentence in so low a whisper,
that only one disconnected word was audible, and that imperfectly. But
it sounded like ‘Bolt.’
‘Why, you’re as bold as brass!’ said Jonas, in the utmost admiration.
‘A man can well afford to be as bold as brass, my good fellow, when he
gets gold in exchange!’ cried the chairman, with a laugh that shook him
from head to foot. ‘You’ll dine with me to-morrow?’
‘At what time?’ asked Jonas.
‘Seven. Here’s my card. Take the documents. I see you’ll join us!’
‘I don’t know about that,’ said Jonas. ‘There’s a good deal to be looked
into first.’
‘You shall look,’ said Montague, slapping him on the back, ‘into
anything and everything you please. But you’ll join us, I am convinced.
You were made for it. Bullamy!’
Obedient to the summons and the little bell, the waistcoat appeared.
Being charged to show Jonas out, it went before; and the voice within it
cried, as usual, ‘By your leave there, by your leave! Gentleman from the
board-room, by your leave!’
Mr Montague being left alone, pondered for some moments, and then said,
raising his voice:
‘Is Nadgett in the office there?’
‘Here he is, sir.’ And he promptly entered; shutting the board-room door
after him, as carefully as if he were about to plot a murder.
He was the man at a pound a week who made the inquiries. It was no
virtue or merit in Nadgett that he transacted all his Anglo-Bengalee
business secretly and in the closest confidence; for he was born to be
a secret. He was a short, dried-up, withered old man, who seemed to have
secreted his very blood; for nobody would have given him credit for the
possession of six ounces of it in his whole body. How he lived was a
secret; where he lived was a secret; and even what he was, was a secret.
In his musty old pocket-book he carried contradictory cards, in some of
which he called himself a coal-merchant, in others a wine-merchant,
in others a commission-agent, in others a collector, in others an
accountant; as if he really didn’t know the secret himself. He was
always keeping appointments in the City, and the other man never seemed
to come. He would sit on ‘Change for hours, looking at everybody who
walked in and out, and would do the like at Garraway’s, and in other
business coffee-rooms, in some of which he would be occasionally seen
drying a very damp pocket-handkerchief before the fire, and still
looking over his shoulder for the man who never appeared. He was
mildewed, threadbare, shabby; always had flue upon his legs and back;
and kept his linen so secretly buttoning up and wrapping over, that he
might have had none--perhaps he hadn’t. He carried one stained beaver
glove, which he dangled before him by the forefinger as he walked or
sat; but even its fellow was a secret. Some people said he had been a
bankrupt, others that he had gone an infant into an ancient Chancery
suit which was still depending, but it was all a secret. He carried bits
of sealing-wax and a hieroglyphical old copper seal in his pocket, and
often secretly indited letters in corner boxes of the trysting-places
before mentioned; but they never appeared to go to anybody, for he would
put them into a secret place in his coat, and deliver them to himself
weeks afterwards, very much to his own surprise, quite yellow. He was