Emmanuel Burden, Merchant of Thames st., in the City of London, Exporter of Hardware
9781465678638
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
Though no prominent citizen is now-a-days permitted to pass “beyond the veil” without an account of him being drawn up for posterity, yet books of this sort have recently grown so common that some warrant for the publication of a new biography may well be demanded. Mr Burden’s public position, combined with his sterling piety and considerable wealth, would alone merit such recognition: to these must be added the fact that he was a Justice of the Peace for the County of Surrey. His connection, moreover, with Imperial Finance has, through the medium of the Press, lent a very general interest to his name even in those parts of London with which he was personally unfamiliar. I am well aware that the task of writing this history could have fallen into abler hands, but it could have been achieved by no one more devoted to his subject, or more familiar with the final catastrophe of this singularly beautiful and modest life. That I possessed the qualifications necessary for a work of this kind, was so evident to writers like Charles Egton, T. T. Batworthy, George K. Morrel, and Mrs Hooke as to cause them to withdraw voluntarily from a field in which they had already—I regret to say—laboured with some assiduity. If, in the face of such a testimony, Mr and Mrs O’Rourke persist in issuing their ill-informed and prejudiced version of the last sad months, I fear I am powerless to dissuade them. I had at first intended my notes for the perusal of friendly eyes alone: to my astonishment, I find them praised almost enthusiastically by two powerful critics (—journalists; valued friends; men whose fingers are ever upon the pulse of the nation), and a little later I learnt that the Directors of the M’Korio Delta Development Company would not be displeased to see printed such a vindication of their methods as my pen had produced. I was assured by Lord Benthorpe, in person, that no salaried agent upon the daily press, nor any professional author they had employed—not even “Ultor”—had given them the full satisfaction they had received from my manuscript. I, therefore, reluctantly consented to rewrite and publish the whole, with such added embellishments of style and fancy, as a wider public deserves.
