The Banker and the Bear

The Banker and the Bear

For more than forty years Bagsbury and Company's Savings Bank had been, in effect, old John Bagsbury himself: a stiff, cautious, dusty institution that mirrored its founder's conservatism. Widowed early and estranged from his daughter Martha after her defiant marriage to Victor Haselridge, old Bagsbury pinned all his hope on his son John, who entered the bank at fifteen. But the boy, exposed to livelier banks through friendships outside Bagsbury's walls, grew disillusioned with his father's gray, change-averse institution. At twenty he met Melville Sponley, a shrewd, outwardly affable speculator who, along with bank president Dawson, drew John into their social circle. Sponley arranged for John to take a position under Dawson at the Atlantic National, and John, after a stiff, almost wordless exchange, left his father's bank. Through the Sponleys he met and fell in love with Alice Blair, Harriet Sponley's young ward, and married her, then was sent by Dawson to manage a bank in Howard City for many years. Seventeen years later, John is back in the city as vice-president of the Atlantic National, still waiting for control of Bagsbury and Company, where his father, now very old, remains president. Living with John and Alice is Dick Haselridge, Martha's spirited, independent niece, orphaned young and devoted to both the Bagsburys and her persistent suitor, Jack Dorlin, who has taken a lowly clerk's job at Bagsbury's largely to stay near her. On Christmas Eve, old Bagsbury is found dead at his desk at the bank, his private papers in disarray; Dick discreetly secures them before John can act. The will leaves John the bulk of the fortune but places the bank stock entirely under three trustees, Cartwright, Meredith, and Moffat, whose votes must agree or be void. Sensing opportunity, John plays on the trustees' personalities, buys up outside stock with Sponley's and others' help (including a costly concession installing the incompetent Jervis Curtin as assistant cashier), and wins control of the bank's board, though not yet his father's fortune. As president, John takes on a new, large depositor, soap manufacturer William Pickering, who is secretly attempting to corner the lard market and borrows heavily from the bank using lard warehouse receipts as collateral, asking John to keep the loan confidential, especially from one unnamed director. That director is Sponley, who, unknown to John, has planted Curtin as a spy. Curtin, blackmailed by Sponley over gambling debts, searches John's office and finds the lard collateral, which Sponley uses to leak word of the loan to a newspaper, jeopardizing Pickering's secrecy. Sponley, it turns out, is planning his own massive bear campaign against Pickering's corner and tries to pressure John into withdrawing the bank's support, threatening to ruin the bank's depositors' confidence and even hinting he could trigger a run on the bank if John does not comply. John refuses, breaking with Sponley despite their twenty-year friendship. Meanwhile Dick and Jack, suspicious of Sponley and Curtin's secretive dealings, independently intervene: Sponley sells off his own Bagsbury stock to unsettle the skittish trustees Cartwright and Meredith, but Dick and Jack, unaware of each other's full plan, buy up that very stock to keep it safely "in the family" and inadvertently help calm the trustees. Curtin, meanwhile, is driven to speculate with bank funds on Sponley's hint that lard will rise, loses badly when Pickering deliberately crashes the market to shake out small traders, and is only saved from exposure by Sponley's quiet bailout, which tightens Sponley's hold over him. Harriet Sponley, worn thin by years of living inside her husband's increasingly solitary, high-stakes schemes, senses she is being shut out of his confidence and is deeply shaken by Curtin's drunken, accusatory outburst at their home, though Sponley manages to reassure her and draws her back into his plans for the climactic fight. As the decisive market battle between Pickering and Sponley opens, with Pickering borrowing another $300,000 from John against a personal note, the two antagonists' struggle for control of the lard market, and indirectly of Bagsbury and Company itself, enters its final, most intense days.

By Henry Kitchell Webster · First published 1904 · Genre: Business Fiction, Literary Realism, Family Drama · 21 chapters · 81,689 words

First lines

For more than forty years Bagsbury and Company was old John Bagsbury himself; merely another expression of his stiff, cautious personality. Like him it had been old from infancy; you could as easily imagine that he had once been something of a dandy, had worn a stiff collar and a well-brushed hat, as that its dusty black-walnut furniture had ever smelled of varnish. And, conversely, though he had a family, a religion to whose requirements he was punctiliously attentive, and a really fine library, the bank represented about all there was of old John Bagsbury.

Similar titles

Genres

Tags

banking · speculation · stock market · bears · financial manipulation · father-son conflict · family estrangement · family business · inheritance · ambition · betrayal · friendship tested

What this Textopian page supports

The Banker and the Bear is listed on Textopian as a novel by Henry Kitchell Webster, dated 1904 CE.

This source record anchors work identity, reading entry points, and catalog context for checking claims about the work.

Good citation fit

Contents

More by Henry Kitchell Webster