Upon that establishment of state, the Merdle establishment in Harley
Street, Cavendish Square, there was the shadow of no more common wall
than the fronts of other establishments of state on the opposite side of
the street. Like unexceptionable Society, the opposing rows of houses in
Harley Street were very grim with one another. Indeed, the mansions and
their inhabitants were so much alike in that respect, that the people
were often to be found drawn up on opposite sides of dinner-tables, in
the shade of their own loftiness, staring at the other side of the way
with the dullness of the houses.
Everybody knows how like the street the two dinner-rows of people who
take their stand by the street will be. The expressionless uniform
twenty houses, all to be knocked at and rung at in the same form, all
approachable by the same dull steps, all fended off by the same pattern
of railing, all with the same impracticable fire-escapes, the same
inconvenient fixtures in their heads, and everything without exception
to be taken at a high valuation--who has not dined with these? The
house so drearily out of repair, the occasional bow-window, the stuccoed
house, the newly-fronted house, the corner house with nothing but
angular rooms, the house with the blinds always down, the house with the
hatchment always up, the house where the collector has called for one
quarter of an Idea, and found nobody at home--who has not dined with
these? The house that nobody will take, and is to be had a bargain--who
does not know her? The showy house that was taken for life by the
disappointed gentleman, and which does not suit him at all--who is
unacquainted with that haunted habitation?
Harley Street, Cavendish Square, was more than aware of Mr and Mrs
Merdle. Intruders there were in Harley Street, of whom it was not aware;
but Mr and Mrs Merdle it delighted to honour. Society was aware of
Mr and Mrs Merdle. Society had said 'Let us license them; let us know
them.' Mr Merdle was immensely rich; a man of prodigious enterprise; a
Midas without the ears, who turned all he touched to gold. He was in
everything good, from banking to building. He was in Parliament, of
course. He was in the City, necessarily. He was Chairman of this,
Trustee of that, President of the other. The weightiest of men had said
to projectors, 'Now, what name have you got? Have you got Merdle?' And,
the reply being in the negative, had said,
'Then I won't look at you.'
This great and fortunate man had provided that extensive bosom which
required so much room to be unfeeling enough in, with a nest of crimson
and gold some fifteen years before. It was not a bosom to repose
upon, but it was a capital bosom to hang jewels upon. Mr Merdle wanted
something to hang jewels upon, and he bought it for the purpose. Storr
and Mortimer might have married on the same speculation.