Extravagance

1 In September of the year 169-, I, William Tobias Merrick--twenty years old and possessed of more sense and education than prospects--was sent from my father's house at Exeter to live with my bachelor uncle, a prominent wine merchant of Wapping, near London. It was thought that I, being the fourth son in a family whose brickworks would only comfortably support three, might learn something there of the shipping trade, my uncle's connexions in this area being quite extensive. Neither my father nor my uncle saw fit to consult me in this matter. Having assumed that any young man should welcome the chance to work amid great seagoing ships, they regarded my opinions as settled beforehand. Thus it never came into their consideration that I disliked the sea above all things, and had once resolved, during an intolerable bark crossing from Cardiff to Portishead some years past, never to set foot on the boards of a ship again. Wapping--as viewed from the horse cart sent to fetch me upon my arrival day--seemed a foul and smoky place. Ships of all sizes lined the blackstone wharves along the Thames, groaning under rank-smelling cargoes of charcoal, wool, indigo, tea, and all else imaginable that a seaworthy craft might hold. The high street, such as it was then, was thronged with a considerable array of humanity--watermen and sailmakers, lightermen and coopers, not to mention members of the other trades, both respectable and not, associated with large river ports. As one reared amid the quiet lanes of Exeter, I knew at once there would be novelties here to fill a year of idle Sundays. And see them I would. Suspecting my uncle to be a man much engaged in his business--and one who might regard his obligations to me as more sentimental than actual--I anticipated his having but little time for my supervision. Thus did I hope to be left largely to my own devices, free to set off into the streets and there occupy myself in the manner of any young man new to the city and eager to take a Dutchman's draught of life--that is, I would take myself to the coffee-houses and the theatres and the taverns, though without much idea of what precisely I would find there. I was at this time a healthy, energetic fellow--well-made but slender in form, restless in manner yet still more so in my thoughts and aspirations. Through my father's generosity, I had conducted early studies with my home tutor and at the Rev. Charles Tuffley's school in Exeter, though it was no one's true expectation that I should pursue a clerical preferment. For I was victim to what my father called an Excess of Animal Spirits, and it was quite apparent to all that life in a Devonshire vicarage would hardly be consonant with my nature. I fancied myself in any case a Deist (much to the Rev. Tuffley's dismay), and would probably have refused a Bishopric at three thousand a year if one had been offered me. Nor, however, was I any more usefully engaged during a year at Trinity College, Cambridge, where the tutors could speak of naught but Plato and like ancients, for which I had but little patience. Why, I would wonder aloud, if there be a Form in Heav'n for every thing we spy on earth, how is there money? Money is for buying what one has not, for filling a perceived lack, so how can there be money in a realm where all is completeness and perfection? To this my Cambridge tutors had no answer but scorn. And so I did not thrive at university, and was soon sent down. I returned to Exeter, where I remained a year before being sent on to my uncle at Wapping. But this last proved all to the best, inasmuch as I had another design--one that rendered my residence in Wapping, so short a distance from the City of London, exceedingly desirable to me. For I, William Tobias Merrick, had every hope of making my living not by the shipping trade, but by what seemed to me the only adventurous profession available to a man of intelligence and enterprize but little fortune--viz., as a StoKrist, Gary is the author of 'Extravagance' with ISBN 9780767913300 and ISBN 0767913302.