interest procured him an admission into the Charterhouse School, at
which illustrious academy he obtained no remarkable distinction.
Nevertheless, as soon as he left it the State took him under its
special care, and appointed him to a clerkship in a public office.
From that moment he continued to get on in the world, and was now a
Commissioner of Customs, with a salary of L1500 a year. As soon as he
had been thus enabled to maintain a wife, he selected a wife who
assisted to maintain himself. She was an Irish peer's widow, with a
jointure of L2000 a year.

A few months after his marriage, Chillingly Gordon effected insurances
on his wife's life, so as to secure himself an annuity of L1000 a year
in case of her decease. As she appeared to be a fine healthy woman,
some years younger than her husband, the deduction from his income
effected by the annual payments for the insurance seemed an
over-sacrifice of present enjoyment to future contingencies. The
result bore witness to his reputation for sagacity, as the lady died
in the second year of their wedding, a few months after the birth of
her only child, and of a heart-disease which had been latent to the
doctors, but which, no doubt, Gordon had affectionately discovered
before he had insured a life too valuable not to need some
compensation for its loss. He was now, then, in the possession of
L2500 a year, and was therefore very well off, in the pecuniary sense
of the phrase. He had, moreover, acquired a reputation which gave him
a social rank beyond that accorded to him by a discerning State. He
was considered a man of solid judgment, and his opinion upon all
matters, private and public, carried weight. The opinion itself,
critically examined, was not worth much, but the way he announced it
was imposing. Mr. Fox said that 'No one ever was so wise as Lord
Thurlow looked.' Lord Thurlow could not have looked wiser than Mr.