The Eternal Adam and other stories (16 page)

‘Across Lake Ontario? That will bring in a
fortune,’ exclaimed several traders who had all caught the speculation fever.
‘Mr Hopkins will have to tell us what kind of business he’s in. I’m buying the
first shares!...’

‘For me, Mr Hopkins, please!’

‘No, for me!’

‘No, for me! I’ll pay you a 1,000-dollar
bonus!...’

The offers and replies flew back and forth
as the confusion increased. Although gambling on the stock market holds no
fascination for me, I followed the group of speculators as they made their way
towards the hero of the
Kentucky.
Hopkins was soon surrounded by a
tightly packed crowd, on whom he did not even deign to cast a glance. Long rows
of figures, and numbers followed by impressive series of zeroes, were spreading
across his vast wallet. Arithmetical calculations – addition, subtraction,
multiplication, and division – flowed from his pencil. The millions streamed
like a torrent from his lips. He seemed to be in the grip of a mathematical
frenzy. Silence fell around him, despite the storms created in every American’s
brain by an obsession with business.

After an operation of tremendous
proportions, during which he broke his pencil three times, Mr Augustus Hopkins
succeeded in tracing out a majestic figure 1, which commanded an army of eight
magnificent zeroes. Finally, he pronounced these three ritual words:

‘One hundred million!’

He quickly folded his papers, stuffed them
back into his impressive wallet, and pulled from his pocket a watch adorned
with a double row of fine pearls.

‘Nine o’clock! It’s nine o’clock already!’
he shouted. ‘Is this damned boat not moving at all? The captain! Where’s the
captain?’

With this, Hopkins abruptly pushed his way
through the three rows of people surrounding him. His glance fell on the
captain, who was leaning over the engine room hatchway, giving orders to the
engineer.

‘You know, Captain,’ he said pompously, ‘a
ten-minute delay could cost me an important business deal.’

‘Who are you talking to about delay?’ retorted
the captain, taken aback by this criticism. ‘You were the one responsible for
it.’

‘If you hadn’t been so stubborn as to leave
me behind,’ replied Hopkins, his voice rising in pitch, ‘you wouldn’t have
wasted valuable time – especially valuable at this time of year.’

‘And if you and your packing cases had
managed to get here on time,’ the captain shot back in an irritated voice, ‘we
could have left on the rising tide, and we’d be a good three miles farther on
than we are now.’

‘That’s no concern of mine. I’ve got to be
at the Washington Hotel in Albany before midnight. If it’s any later, I might
as well not have left New York at all. I’m warning you! If that happens, I’ll
sue you and your company for damages.’

‘Just leave me alone!’ shouted the captain,
who was beginning to lose his temper.

‘I certainly will not, not as long as
you’re so spineless and cheap with your fuel that you could make me lose a
fortune ten times over. Come on, stokers, let’s have four or five good
shovelfuls of coal in your furnaces. And you there, engineer, just keep your
foot on the safety valve of your boiler until we make up the time we’ve lost.’

He took out a purse with a few shiny
dollars in it and tossed it down into the engine room.

The captain flew into a violent rage, but
his fanatical passenger bellowed even louder and longer than he did. I thought
it best to hurry away from the scene of battle, for I knew that Hopkins’s
advice to the engineer, to make the ship go faster by holding down the safety
valve and increasing the steam pressure, could very well cause the boiler to
explode.

Needless to say, our travelling companions
considered the advice very sound, and so I decided not to mention it to Mrs
Melvil. She would have laughed until she cried at my groundless fears.

When I rejoined her, she had finished her
lengthy calculations, and the cares of business no longer furrowed her charming
brow.

‘You took leave of a businesswoman,’ she
said, ‘and now you return to find a woman of the world, ready to listen to
whatever you care to talk about – art, sentiment, poetry ..."

‘How can I talk about art, or dreams, or
poetry, after what I’ve just seen and heard? I’ve caught the mercantile spirit,
and all I can hear now is the jingling of dollars. I’m blinded by their
glittering brilliance. To me, this beautiful river is now simply a route for
moving merchandise. Its charming banks are just a highway for transporting
goods. Those pretty little towns are nothing but a series of stores for selling
sugar and cotton. I’m seriously thinking of building a dam across the Hudson
and using the water to turn a coffee mill.’

‘Well now, except for the coffee mill,
that’s not a bad idea!’

‘And why, may I ask, should I not have
ideas, just like anyone else?’

Mrs Melvil laughed. ‘So you’ve really been
bitten by the industry bug, have you?’

‘Listen, and judge for yourself.’

I told her about everything I had seen that
day. She listened attentively to my account, as any intelligent American would
have done, and then began to ponder over it. A Parisian woman would not have
let me tell the half of it.

‘Well, madam, what do you think of this
Hopkins?’

‘He could be an investment genius starting
up a huge enterprise, or he could be nothing but a bear trainer from the latest
Baltimore fair.’

I burst out laughing and the conversation
turned to other matters.

Our voyage ended with no further incident,
except that Hopkins tried to move one of his huge packing cases, against the
captain’s advice, and nearly dumped it overboard. The ensuing discussion gave
him another chance to hold forth on the importance of his business dealings and
the value of his cargo. He lunched and dined like a man whose aim is not to
take on nourishment, but to spend as much money as possible. By the time we
reached our destination, every passenger on board was singing the praises of
this extraordinary character.

The
Kentucky
docked at Albany before
the fatal hour of midnight. I gave Mrs Melvil my arm, thinking myself fortunate
to have disembarked safe and sound, while Mr Augustus Hopkins, with
considerable ado, got his two marvellous packing cases unloaded and made his
triumphal entry into the Washington Hotel, followed by a large crowd.

Mr Francis Wilson, Mrs Melvil’s father,
greeted me with a grace and openness that made his hospitality all the more
welcome. Nothing would do but that I must accept an attractive blue room in
that honourable businessman’s home. I cannot call it a hotel, for although it
was an immense house, its spacious apartments were overshadowed by the enormous
stores, crammed with merchandise from all over the world. The business
establishments of Le Havre and Bordeaux are only a faint imitation of this
city, with its swarms of office workers, tradesmen, clerks, and labourers.
Although the master of the house had many demands on his time, I was treated
like a king. I had no need to ask, or even to wish for anything. And as if this
were not enough, I was waited on by black servants, and for anyone who has
enjoyed that experience, nothing else will do.

The name Albany had always struck me as a
charming one, and the next day I went for a walk in that beautiful city. I
found that it had all the activity of New York, the same bustle of business,
the same wide variety of interests. The businessmen’s thirst for profit, the
zeal with which they work, their need to extract money by every means that
industry or speculation can discover, does not have the same repulsive aspect
in the traders of the New World as it sometimes produces in their overseas
counterparts. They act with a certain grandeur that is quite compelling. It is
easy to understand why these people need to earn money in such large amounts,
because they spend it on the same scale.

The conversations over our luxuriously
served meals, and during the evenings, began in a very general way, but soon
turned to more specific topics. We chatted about the city, its points of
interest, its theatre. It seemed to me that Mr Wilson was very well informed
about these worldly amusements, but when we got around to discussing the
eccentricities of particular cities, a topic that has aroused considerable
interest in Europe, he proved to be American to the core.

‘Are you referring,’ he asked me, ‘to our
attitude to the famous Lola Montès?’

‘Of course,’ I replied, ‘only the Americans
could have taken the Countess of Lansfeld seriously.’

‘We took her seriously because she acted
like a serious person. It’s the same in business. When serious matters are
treated lightly, we don’t attach the slightest importance to them.’

‘You must have been shocked,’ said Mrs
Melvil facetiously, ‘to learn that Lola Montès spent some of her time here
visiting girls’ boarding schools.’

‘To tell the honest truth,’ I replied,
‘that did strike me as bizarre. She is a very charming dancer, but not exactly
a role model for our young ladies to emulate.’

‘Our young ladies,’ retorted Mr Wilson,
‘are brought up along more independent lines than yours are. When Lola Montès
visited their boarding schools, it was neither the Parisian dancer nor the
Bavarian Countess of Lansfeld who made her appearance there, but simply a
famous and very attractive woman. The curious children who saw her were not
harmed in the least by her visit. It was a holiday, a bit of fun and amusement.
Now what’s wrong with that?’

‘What’s wrong is that great artists are
spoiled by these extraordinary ovations. When they come home after a tour in
the United States, they’re completely impossible.’

‘What have they got to complain about,
then?’ asked Mr Wilson abruptly.

‘Nothing at all,’ I replied. ‘But how could
Jenny Lind feel honoured by European hospitality when here she sees the pillars
of society clinging to her carriage during public festivities? How can hospital
openings, which her impresario arranges for her, compete with that?’

‘Now you’re beginning to sound jealous,’
quipped Mrs Melvil. ‘You resent the fact that such an eminent artist has always
refused to perform in Paris.’

‘Absolutely not, madam. And in any case I
wouldn’t advise her to come to Paris, because she would find a very different
reception from the one you gave her here.’

‘That’s your loss,’ said Mr Wilson.

‘Not as much our loss as hers, if you ask
me.’

Mrs Melvil laughed. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘you
do lose some hospitals, at least.’

After a few more minutes of banter, Mr
Wilson said to me: ‘If you’re interested in exhibitions and sales, you’ve come
at just the right time. The first tickets for Madame Sontag’s concert are going
to be auctioned off tomorrow.’

‘Auctioned? Just as if they were auctioning
off a railroad?’

‘Exactly. And the buyer who seems ready to
make the highest bid so far is an ordinary hatter from right here in Albany.’

‘He must be a great music lover, is he?’ I
asked.

‘Him? John Turner? He absolutely detests
music. He thinks it’s the most unpleasant sound in the world.’

‘What’s he up to, then?’

‘He wants to improve his public image. It’s
an advertising stunt. People will talk about him, not only here, but in every
state in the Union, and not just in America, but in Europe as well. People will
buy hats from him. He’ll ship his junk out to the whole world.’

‘I can’t believe it!’

‘You’ll see tomorrow, and if you need a hat
...’

‘I won’t buy one of his. They must be
appalling.’

‘Oho!’ said Mrs Melvil, getting to her
feet. ‘Listen to the fanatical Parisian!’

I took leave of my hosts and went off to
ponder over these American wonders.

The next day I went to the auction of the
famous first ticket to Madame Sontag’s concert, with a serious look on my face
that would have done justice to the most phlegmatic American in the whole
country. All eyes were on John Turner the hatter, the hero of this new craze.
His friends came up to him and complimented him as if he were the saviour of
his country’s independence. Others were egging him on and laying bets on his
chances of winning the honour, as against the chances of his competitors.

The bidding started. Soon the price of the
first ticket had risen from four dollars to 200 and then 300 dollars. John
Turner was sure his would be the winning bid. He never tried to outbid his
competitors by more than a small amount, for an increase of a single dollar
would have been enough to make him the lucky purchaser, and he was prepared to
spend 1,000, if he had to, to acquire the precious ticket. The bidding rose
rapidly to 300, 400, 500, and 600 dollars. The crowd’s excitement rose to a
fever pitch, and roars of approval greeted every reckless bidder. The first
ticket took on an astronomical price in everyone’s mind, and scarcely any
thought was given to the others. It was, in short, a question of honour.

Suddenly, a longer cheer than usual rang
out, as the hatter shouted in a stentorian voice: