And when the above-named cousin of Lady Sorrel has a palaver with the same merchant Dashall, he is instructed in the inner secrets of the commercial world after the following guise: —
"Dashall.– Capital! – an old bugbear – never thought of now. No! paper, discount, does it all.
"Caustic.– Paper!
"Dashall.– Ay. Suppose I owe a tradesman – my tailor, for instance – two thousand pounds —
"Caustic.– A merchant owe his tailor two thousand pounds! – Mercy on me!
"Dashall.– I give him my note for double the sum – he discounts it – I touch half in the ready – note comes due – double the sum again – touch half again – and so on to the tune of fifty thousand pounds. If monopolies answer, make all straight; if not; smash into the Gazette. Brother merchants say, 'D – d fine fellow; lived in style – only traded beyond his capital.' So certificate's signed, ruin a hundred or two reptiles of retailers, and so begin the war again. That's the way to make a splash – devilish neat, isn't it? How you stare! you don't know nothing of life, old boy.
"Caustic.– Vulgar scoundrel!
"Dashall.– We are the boys in the city. Why, there's Sweetwort the brewer – don't you know Sweetwort? Dines an hour later than any duke in the kingdom – imports his own turtle – dresses turbot by a stop watch – has house-lamb fed on cream, and pigs on pine apples – gave a jollification t'other day – stokehole in the brew-house – asked a dozen peers – all glad to come – can't live as we do. Who make the splash in Hyde Park? – who fill the pit at the opera? – who inhabit the squares in the West? Why, the knowing ones from the East to be sure.
"Caustic.– Not the wise ones from the East, I'm sure.
"Dashall.– Who support the fashionable Faro tables? Oh, how the duchesses chuckle and rub their hands, when they see one of us!
"Caustic.– Duchesses keep gaming-tables!
"Dashall.– To be sure! How the devil should they live?"
Such, O learned Cho-Ling-Kyang! is the real life of those extraordinary beings who are so steady and plodding to outward appearance. Little would you suspect that, when one of the merchants of the factory got home, he would aid duchesses in the setting up of Faro tables, and mix with all the brilliant and dissolute society of a great city. To us, such thoughts would seem unnatural, and scarcely would the president of the Hong consider himself qualified to hold a chopstick in the presence of a yellow button. And I fear greatly; that in the extremity of your unbelief you say, Tush, tush – Ping-Kee is deceiving us by inventing foolish deceits! An English merchant would not make open profession of his bankruptcy; an English lady of rank would not exult in the number of people she had ruined by false play at cards; an English gentleman would not concert plans with his sister for the seduction of a lord's daughter; an English sheriff would not throw off his grocer's apron to go and receive the judges, while an English barrister put it on, and sold figs to the beautiful daughter of a British captain. But consider, O Cho-Ling-Kyang! that I am a man of veracity from my youth, and that if I make so bold as to invent, or even to misquote, there may be many beside you who can convict me at once. And if you persist in your doubts, and say, verily the writers of those plays give no true account of their countrymen, but write false things which have no existence in reality, what shall we think of the countless numbers who go to see those representations, and take no steps to punish the authors for libels and defamations – but, contrariwise, applaud and clap their hands, and say "good, good" – would they do this if the picture had no resemblance? But they hold up the stage as a school of morals, and a copy of things that are. And another argument, O Cho-Ling-Kyang! that these dramas are drawn from experience and observation is, that they do not contradict each other, as they would assuredly do if they proceeded from any source but reality. No, no – great sir – believe me, that the scenes I have quoted are excellent descriptions of the characters introduced, and that their originals are to be met with every day. Again, perhaps you will say – not so; O Ping-Kee, the writers of those plays are stupid men – with shaved heads – that have no understanding, and receive no greater reward than the conjurers who catch balls on their foreheads, and balance long poles in the market-place! But the case is far different, as I will prove to you from the preface to one of those works, written by a lady called Inchbald, who herself wrote many comedies, and received much money for the same.
"It is well known that the English theatres never flourished as they do at present, (1807.) When it is enquired, why painting, poetry, and sculpture, decline in England? want of encouragment is the sure reply; but this reply cannot be given to the question, why dramatic literature fails? for never was there such high remuneration conferred upon every person, and every work belonging to the drama. A new play which, from a reputed wit of former times, would not with success bring him a hundred pounds, a manager will now purchase from a reputed blockhead at the price of near a thousand, and sustain all risk of whether it be condemned or not. Great must be the attraction of modern plays to repay such speculation. It is a consolation to the dramatist of the present age, that while his plays are more attractive than ever those of former writers were, those authors had their contemporary critics as well as he, though less acute and less severe indeed than the present race."
I have not time to reduce into celestial money the English sum of a thousand pounds; but it is great, yea, more than the value in three years of the longest peacock's feather in Pekin, and the value of a play is not diminished since then. Not many moons ago, there was a reward offered by one of the managers, of five hundred gold coins called guineas, to the person who should send to him the best comedy illustrative of present manners. O Cho-Ling-Kyang, the power of five hundred guineas in awakening the poetic powers of mankind! The great majority of the English nation for a whole year wrote nothing but plays; all the world was a stage, and all the men and women merely writers; and when the time came, all had broken down in the attempt, except ninety-six. But through these fourscore and sixteen dramas, all painting the habits and characteristics of the present time, the judges appointed by the manager had to read. And they read – and read; and when they came to a decision, lo! it was in favour of a lady – one of the cleverest authors, in other styles, that England has ever seen – bright, polished, witty; and although not in a dramatic form, more dramatic and lively than any professed play-writer since one called Sherry, from his fondness for drinking wine. 'Midst the applause of all the rest of the world, and the hatred and jealousy of her ninety-five competitors, she was presented with the money; and the manager, on looking through a hole in the curtain on the first night of the performance, saw the whole house crowded from the floor to the roof, and thought he had never so wisely laid out five hundred guineas in his life. "Oho!" said wise men to each other in the boxes, "we shall see ourselves as we are – no farcical exaggeration, no vulgar grievances; the woman is an observing woman, and has mixed in great society; moreover, it is the best play out of nearly a hundred; let us wait, it will be as good as the School for Scandal." And they stamped loud with their feet. The play was called the Day of Dupes; and wise men in the boxes were not exempt from the general fate. All were dupes together. For the authoress was a wise woman, and jingled the five hundred guineas in a purse, and kept all her own clever observation of life and manners to be used on some other occasion, and took the same view and no other of English customs and character that Reynolds, and Morton, and O'Keefe, and Colman, had done before her. So her heroes and heroines flew about the stage, and talked funny things, and swore a little, and conversed in a provincial dialect called slang, and behaved exactly as Dashall, and Miss Dazzle, and Lord Sparkle had behaved before. Oh! was not this a triumph to the great authors of former days, and did it not prove that wise men in the boxes are foolish men when judging of the stage? It did, O Cho-Ling-Kyang! but a greater triumph was at hand. The manager having read and studied the preface by the female Inchbald, which I have translated for your instruction, and having given a small sum – so they consider five hundred guineas in this land of ingots – to a reputed wit, thought he would gain much silver if he obtained a drama from a reputed blockhead. And he was right in his calculation; for he applied to an author