“The deuce you will!”
“How nice it will be, too, never having to ask you for money. It does so annoy you sometimes.”
And Nicholas thought: ‘Well, I HAVE been and gone and done it. Women!’ Turning still more on his elbow, he regarded her lying on her back with that queer little smile on her lips as if she were saying to herself: ‘Dear Nicholas, the cleverest man in London!’
So was Nicholas, in common with other Kings, limited by his Constitution.
A SAD AFFAIR, 1867
In 1866, at the age of nineteen, young Jolyon Forsyte left Eton and went up to Cambridge, in the semi-whiskered condition of those days. An amiable youth of fair scholastic and athletic attainments, and more susceptible to emotions, aesthetic and otherwise, than most young barbarians, he went up a little intoxicated on the novels of Whyte Melville. From continually reading about whiskered dandies, garbed to perfection and imperturbably stoical in the trying circumstances of debt and discomfiture, he had come to the conviction that to be whiskered and unmoved by Fortune was quite the ultimate hope of existence. There was something not altogether ignoble at the back of his creed. He passed imperceptibly into a fashionable set, and applied himself to the study of whist. All the heroes of Whyte Melville played whist admirably; all rode horses to distraction. Young Jolyon joined the Drag, and began to canter over to Newmarket, conveniently situated for Cambridge undergraduates. Like many youths before and after him, he had gone into residence with little or no idea of the value of money; and in the main this ‘sad affair’ must be traced to the fact that while he had no idea of the value of money, and, in proportion to his standards, not much money, his sire, Old Jolyon, had much idea of the value of money, and still more money. The hundred pounds placed to his credit for his first term seemed to young Jolyon an important sum, and he had very soon none of it left. This surprised him, but was of no great significance, because all Whyte Melville’s dandies were in debt; indeed, half their merit consisted in an imperturbable indifference to mere financial liability. Young Jolyon proceeded, therefore, to get into debt. It was easy, and ‘the thing.’ At the end of his first term he had spent just double his allowance. He was not vicious nor particularly extravagant—but what, after all, was money? Besides, to live on the edge of Fortune was the only way to show that one could rise above it. Not that he deliberately hired horses, bought clothes, boots, wine and tobacco, for that purpose; still, there was in a sense a principle involved. This is made plain, because it was exactly what was not plain to Old Jolyon later on. He, as a young man, with not half his son’s allowance, had never been in debt, had paid his way, and made it. But then he had not had the advantages of Eton, Cambridge, and the novels of Whyte Melville. He had simply gone into Tea.
Young Jolyon going up for his second term, with another hundred pounds from an unconscious sire, at once perceived that if he paid his debts, or any appreciable portion of them, he would have no money for the term’s expenses. He therefore applied his means to the more immediate ends of existence—College fees, ‘wines,’ whist, riding, and so forth—and left his debts to grow.
At the end of his first year he was fully three hundred pounds to the bad, and beginning to be reflective. Unhappily, however, he went up for his second year with longer whiskers and a more perfect capacity for enjoyment than ever. He had the best fellows in the world for friends, life was sweet, Schools still far off. He was liked and he liked being liked; he had, in fact, a habit of existence eminently unsuited to the drawing-in of horns.
Now his set were very pleasant young men from Eton and Harrow and Winchester, some of whom had more worldly knowledge than young Jolyon, and some of whom had more money, but none of whom had more sense of responsibility. It was in the rooms of ‘Cuffs’ Charwell (the name was pronounced Cherrell, who was taking Divinity Schools, and was afterwards the Bishop) that whist was first abandoned for baccarat, under the auspices of ‘Donny’ Covercourt. That young scion of the Shropshire Covercourts had discovered this exhilarating pastime, indissolubly connected with the figure Nine, at a French watering-place during the Long Vacation, and when he returned to Cambridge was brimming over with it, in his admirably impassive manner. Now, young Jolyon was not by rights a gambler; that is to say, he was self-conscious about the thing, never properly carried away. Moreover, in spite of Whyte Melville, he was by this time indubitably nervous about his monetary position—on all accounts, therefore, inclined to lose rather than to win. But when such cronies as ‘Cuffs’ Cherrell, ‘Feathers’ Totteridge, Guy Winlow, and ‘Donny’ himself—best fellows in the world—were bent on baccarat, who could be a ‘worm’ and wriggle away?
On the fourth evening his turn came to take the ‘bank.’ What with paying off his most pestiferous creditors and his College fees, so unfeelingly exacted in advance, he had just fifteen pounds left—the term being a fortnight spent. He was called on to take a ‘bank’ of one hundred. With a sinking heart and a marbled countenance, therefore, he sat down at the head of the green board. This was his best chance, so far, of living up to his whiskers—come what would, he must not fail the shades of ‘Digby Grand,’ ‘Daisy Waters,’ and the ‘Honble Crasher’!
He lost from the first moment; with one or two momentary flickers of fortune in his favour, his descent to Avernus was one of the steadiest ever made. He sat through it with his heart kept in by very straight lips. He rose languidly at the end of half an hour with the ‘bank’ broken, and, wanly smiling, signed his I.O.U’s, including one to ‘Donny’ Covercourt for a cool eighty. Restoring himself with mulled claret, he resumed his seat at the board, but, for the rest of the evening, neither won nor lost. He went across the Quad to his own rooms with a queasy feeling—he was seeing his father’s face. For this was his first unpayable debt of honour, so different from mere debts to tradesmen. And, sitting on his narrow bed in his six-foot by fifteen bedroom, he wrestled for the means of payment. Paid somehow it must be! Would his Bank let him overdraw to the amount? He could see the stolid faces behind that confounded counter. Not they! And if they didn’t! That brute Davids? Or—the Dad? Which was worse? Oh! the Dad was worse! For, suddenly, young Jolyon was perceiving that from the beginning he had lived up here a life that his father would not understand. With a sort of horror he visualised his effort to explain it to that high-domed forehead, and the straight glance that came from so deep behind. No! Davids was the ticket! After all, ‘Daisy Waters,’ ‘Digby Grand,’ the ‘Honble. Crasher,’ and the rest of the elect—had they jibbed at money-lenders? Not so! Did ‘Feathers,’ did ‘Donny’? What else were money-lenders for but lending money? Trying to cheer himself with that thought, he fell asleep from sheer unhappiness.
Next morning, at his Bank, very tight lips assured him that an overdraft without security was not in the day’s work. Young Jolyon arched his eyebrows, ran fingers through a best whisker, drawled the words: “It’s of no consequence!” and went away, stiffening his fallen crest. In front of him he saw again his father’s face, and he couldn’t stand it. He sought the rooms of ‘Feathers’ Totteridge. The engaging youth had just had his ‘tosh’ and was seated over devilled kidneys, in his dressing-gown.
Young Jolyon said:
“Feathers, old cock, give me a note to that brute Davids!”
Feathers stared. “What ho, friend!” he said. “Plucked? He’ll skin you, Jo.”
“Can’t be helped,” said young Jolyon, glumly.
He went away armed with the note, and in the afternoon sought the abode of Mr. Rufus Davids. The Hebraic benefactor read the note, and bent on young Jolyon the glance of criticism.
“How mutth do you want, Mithter Forthyte?” he said.
“One hundred and fifty.”
“That will cotht you two hundred thicth month from now. I give good termth.”