was glad to see, my
heart being heavy--a decanter of sherry and another of port, remnants
of a stock which, I suppose, will not be replenished. They ate pretty
fairly, but scarcely like Englishmen, and drank a reasonable quantity,
but not as if their hearts were in it, or as if the liquor went to their
hearts and gladdened them. I gathered from them a strong idea of what
commercial failure means to English merchants--utter ruin, present and
prospective, and obliterating all the successful past; how little chance
they have of ever getting up again; how they feel that they must plod
heavily onward under a burden of disgrace--poor men and hopeless men
and men forever ashamed. I doubt whether any future prosperity (which
is unlikely enough to come to them) could ever compensate them for this
misfortune, or make them, to their own consciousness, the men they were.
They will be like a woman who has once lost her chastity: no after-life
of virtue will take out the stain. It is not so in America, nor ought it
to be so here; but they said themselves they would never again have put
unreserved confidence in a man who had been bankrupt, and they could
not but apply the same severe rule to their own case. I was touched by
nothing more than by their sorrowful patience, without any fierceness
against Providence or against mankind, or disposition to find fault with
anything but their own imprudence; and there was a simple dignity, too,
in their not assuming the aspect of stoicism. I could really have shed
tears for them, to see how like men and Christians they let the tears
come to their own eyes. This is the true way to do; a man ought not to
be too proud to let his eyes be moistened in the presence of God and
of a friend. They talked of some little annoyances, half laughingly.
Bennoch has been dunned for his gas-bill at Blackheath (only a pound or
two) and has paid it. Mr. Twentyman seems to have received an insulting
message from some creditor. Mr. Riggs spoke of wanting a little money
to pay for some boots. It was very sad, indeed, to see these men of
uncommon energy and ability, all now so helpless, and, from managing
great enterprises, involving vast expenditures, reduced almost to reckon
the silver in their pockets. Bennoch and I sat by the fireside a little
while after his partners had left the room, and then he told me that he
blamed himself, as holding the principal position in the firm, for not
having exercised a stronger cont