So how should we feel about Augustus Melmotte?
When Paul Montague and Hamilton Fisker first come to Melmotte with the plan to build a railroad in America and sell shares in London, he gets it. He recognizes the “game”. He’s played it before.
“ …the appetite for such stocks as theirs, which might certainly be produced in the speculating world by a proper manipulation of the affairs.”
He appoints young men with titles and no business sense to the board. He let’s them buy shares but not sell them while the price is going up.
He takes the money from the sale of shares to rebuild a country home, entertain the Emperor of China and buy a seat in the House of Parliament.
Unfortunately he is too greedy and does too much too soon.
So why do we admire the guys who can get away with it?
Even Trollope admires the man who can pull it off:
“…but he for a few moments looking up at the bright stars. If he could be there, in one of those unknown distant worlds, with all his present intellect and none of his present burdens, he would, he thought, do better than he had done on earth. If he could even now put himself down nameless, fameless, and without possessions in some distant corner of the world, he could, he thought, do better.”
More than a human being, a life force.
When Paul Montague and Hamilton Fisker first come to Melmotte with the plan to build a railroad in America and sell shares in London, he gets it. He recognizes the “game”. He’s played it before.
“ …the appetite for such stocks as theirs, which might certainly be produced in the speculating world by a proper manipulation of the affairs.”
He appoints young men with titles and no business sense to the board. He let’s them buy shares but not sell them while the price is going up.
He takes the money from the sale of shares to rebuild a country home, entertain the Emperor of China and buy a seat in the House of Parliament.
Unfortunately he is too greedy and does too much too soon.
So why do we admire the guys who can get away with it?
Even Trollope admires the man who can pull it off:
“…but he for a few moments looking up at the bright stars. If he could be there, in one of those unknown distant worlds, with all his present intellect and none of his present burdens, he would, he thought, do better than he had done on earth. If he could even now put himself down nameless, fameless, and without possessions in some distant corner of the world, he could, he thought, do better.”
More than a human being, a life force.
