As soon as we were in prosperity, Mr.and Mrs.Grimes Wapshot made overtures to be reconciled to us; and Mr.Wapshot laid bare to me all the baseness of Mr.Smithers's conduct in the Brough transaction.Smithers had also endeavoured to pay his court to me, once when I went down to Somersetshire; but I cut his pretensions short, as I have shown."He it was," said Mr.Wapshot, "who induced Mrs.Grimes (Mrs.Hoggarty she was then) to purchase the West Diddlesex shares: receiving, of course, a large bonus for himself.But directly he found that Mrs.Hoggarty had fallen into the hands of Mr.Brough, and that he should lose the income he made from the lawsuits with her tenants and from the management of her landed property, he determined to rescue her from that villain Brough, and came to town for the purpose.He also," added Mr.Wapshot, "vented his malignant slander against me; but Heaven was pleased to frustrate his base schemes.In the proceedings consequent on Brough's bankruptcy, Mr.Smithers could not appear; for his own share in the transactions of the Company would have been most certainly shown up.During his absence from London, I became the husband--the happy husband--of your aunt.But though, my dear sir, I have been the means of bringing her to grace, I cannot disguise from you that Mrs.W.has faults which all my pastoral care has not enabled me to eradicate.She is close of her money, sir--very close; nor can I make that charitable use of her property which, as a clergyman, I ought to do; for she has tied up every shilling of it, and only allows me half-a-crown a week for pocket-money.In temper, too, she is very violent.During the first years of our union, I strove with her; yea, I chastised her; but her perseverance, I must confess, got the better of me.I make no more remonstrances, but am as a lamb in her hands, and she leads me whithersoever she pleases."Mr.Wapshot concluded his tale by borrowing half-a-crown from me (it was at the Somerset Coffee-house in the Strand, where he came, in the year 1832, to wait upon me), and I saw him go from thence into the gin- shop opposite, and come out of the gin-shop half-an- hour afterwards,reeling across the streets, and perfectly intoxicated.
He died next year: when his widow, who called herself Mrs.Hoggarty-Grimes-Wapshot, of Castle Hoggarty, said that over the grave of her saint all earthly resentments were forgotten, and proposed to come and live with us; paying us, of course, a handsome remuneration.But this offer my wife and I respectfully declined; and once more she altered her will, which once more she had made in our favour; called us ungrateful wretches and pampered menials, and left all her property to the Irish Hoggarties.But seeing my wife one day in a carriage with Lady Tiptoff, and hearing that we had been at the great ball at Tiptoff Castle, and that I had grown to be a rich man, she changed her mind again, sent for me on her death-bed, and left me the farms of Slopperton and Squashtail, with all her savings for fifteen years.Peace be to her soul! for certainly she left me a very pretty property.
Though I am no literary man myself, my cousin Michael (who generally, when he is short of coin, comes down and passes a few months with us) says that my Memoirs may be of some use to the public (meaning, I suspect, to himself); and if so, I am glad to serve him and them, and hereby take farewell: bidding all gents who peruse this, to be cautious of their money, if they have it; to be still more cautious of their friends' money; to remember that great profits imply great risks; and that the great shrewd capitalists of this country would not be content with four per cent.for their money, if they could securely get more: above all, I entreat them never to embark in any speculation, of which the conduct is not perfectly clear to them, and of which the agents are not perfectly open and loyal.
