World's End. Richard Jefferies
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the United States, and Sternhold took possession. Then came the Swamp settlement difficulty.
At first Baskette thought of carrying matters with a high hand. The squatters said they had lived there for two generations, or nearly so, and had paid no rent. They had a right. Sternhold remembered that they were of his clan. He gave them the same terms as the Sibbolds—and they took them. Three hundred pounds to such miserable wretches seemed an El Dorado.
They signed a deed, and went to America, filling up half a vessel, for there were seventeen heads of families, and children ad libitum.
Thus Sternhold bought the farm and the Swamp for 7500 pounds. His aim in getting them to America was that no question of right might crop up—for the Cunard line was not then what it is now, and the passage was expensive and protracted. He reckoned that they would spend the money soon after landing, and never have a chance of returning.
Meantime the railway came to a standstill. There had been inflation—vast sums of promotion money had been squandered in the usual reckless manner, and ruin stared the shareholders in the face. To Sternhold it meant absolute loss of all, and above everything, of prestige.
Already the keen business men of the place began to sneer at him. At any cost the railway must be kept on its legs. He sacrificed a large share of his wealth, and the works recommenced. The old swamp, or marsh, was drained.
Sternhold had determined to make this the Belgravia of Stirmingham, and had the plans prepared accordingly. They were something gigantic in costliness and magnificence. His best friends warned and begged him to desist. No; he would go on. Stirmingham would become the finest city in England, and he should be the richest man in Europe. Up rose palatial mansions, broad streets, splendid club-houses—even the foundations of a theatre were laid. And all this was begun at once. Otherwise, Sternhold was afraid that the compass of an ordinary life would not enable him to see these vast designs finished. So that one might walk through streets with whole blocks of houses only one story high.
Everything went on swimmingly, till suddenly the mania for speculation which had taken possession of all the kingdom received a sudden check by the failure of a certain famous railway king.
As if by magic, all the mighty works at Stirmingham ceased, and Sternhold grew sombre, and wandered about with dejected step. His friends, men of business, reminded him of their former warnings. He bent his head, bit his lip, and said only, “Wait!”
Meantime the line had been constructed, but was not opened. The metals were down, but the stations were not built, and the locomotives had not arrived. Everybody was going smash. Several collieries failed; land and houses became cheap. Sternhold invested his uttermost in the same property—bought houses, till he had barely enough to keep him in bread and cheese. Still they laughed and jeered at him, and still he said only, “Wait!”
This place, this swamp, seemed to be fated to demonstrate over and over again at one time the futility of human calculation, and at another what enormous things can be accomplished by the efforts of a clever man.
Volume One—Chapter Four.
The owner of three parts of Stirmingham—now a monstrous overgrown city, just building a cathedral—actually had nothing but a little bread and cheese for supper. There were people who condoled with him, and offered to lend him sums of money—not large, but very useful to a starving man, one would have thought. He shrugged his shoulders and said, “Thank you; I’ll wait.”
Certain keen speculators tried to come round him in twenty different ways. They represented that all this mass of bricks and mortar—this unfinished Belgravia—really was not worth owning; no one could ever find the coin to finish the plans, and house property had depreciated ninety per cent.
“Very true,” said Sternhold. “Good morning, gentlemen.”
He held on like grim death. Men of genius always do—mark Caesar, and all of them. ’Tis the bulldog that wins.
By-and-by things began to take a turn. The markets looked up. Iron and coal got brisker. The first locomotive was put on the line, then another, and another; London could be reached in two hours, goods could be transmitted in six, instead of thirty by the old canal or turnpike.
The Stock Exchange got busy again. You could hear the masons and bricklayers—chink, tink, tinkle, as their trowels chipped off the edges—singing away in chorus. The whistle of the engines was never silent. Vast clouds of smoke hung over the country from the factories and furnaces. Two or three new trades were introduced—among others, the placed goods, cheap jewellery, and idol-making businesses, and trade-guns for Africa. Rents began to rise; in two years they went up forty per cent. The place got a name throughout the length and breadth of the kingdom, and a Name is everything to a town as well as to an individual.
But by a curious contradiction, just as his property began to rise in value, and his investment looked promising, Sternhold grew melancholy and walked about more wretched than ever. The truth soon leaked out—he had no money to complete his half-finished streets and blocks of houses. Nothing could induce him to borrow; not a halfpenny would he take from any man.
There the streets and houses, the theatres, club-houses, magnificent mansions, huge hotels, languished, half-finished, some a story, some two stories high, exposed to wind and weather. In the midst of a great city there was all this desolation, as if an enemy had wreaked his vengeance on this quarter only.
Large as were the sums derived from his other properties—houses and shops and land, which were occupied—it was all eaten up in the attempt to finish this marble Rome in the middle of a brick Babylon. Heavy amounts too had to be disbursed to keep the railway going, for it did not pay a fraction of dividend yet. Men of business pressed on Sternhold. “Let us complete the place,” they said. “Sell it to us on building leases; no one man can do the whole. Then we will form three or four companies or syndicates, lease it of you, complete the buildings, and after seventy years the whole will revert to you or your heirs.”
Still Sternhold hesitated. At last he did lease a street or two in this way to a company, who went to work like mad, paid the masons and bricklayers double wages, kept them at it day and night, and speedily were paying twenty per cent, dividends on their shares out of the rents of the completed buildings. This caused a rush. Company after company was formed. They gave Sternhold heavy premiums for the privilege to buy of him; even then it was difficult to get him to grant the leases. When he did accept the terms and the ready cash, every halfpenny of it went to complete streets on his own account; and so he lived, as it were, from hand to mouth.
After all this excitement and rush, after some thousands of workmen were put at it, they did not seem to make much impression upon the huge desolation of brick and mortar. Streets and squares rose up, and still there were acres upon acres of wilderness, foundations half-dug out and full of dirty water, walls three feet high, cellars extending heaven only knew where.
People came for miles to see it, and called it “Baskette’s Folly.” After a while, however, they carefully avoided it, and called it something worse—i.e. “The Rookery;” for all the scum and ruffianism of an exceptionally scummy and ruffianly residuum chose it as their stronghold. Thieves and worse—ill-conditioned women—crowds of lads, gipsies, pedlars—the catalogue would be as long as Homer’s—took up their residence in these foundations and cellars. They seized on the planks which were lying about in enormous piles, and roofed over the low walls; and where planks would not do they got canvas.
Now, it is well-known that this class of people do not do much harm when they are scattered about and separated here, there, and everywhere over a city; but as soon as they are concentrated in one spot, then it becomes serious. Gangs are formed, they increase in boldness; the police are defied, and not a house is safe.
This place became a crying evil. The papers raved about it, the police (there were police now) complained and reported it to head-quarters. There