One of the great rewards, for me, of studying literature is the discovery of quotations from a text that resonate with, and have relevance to, modern readers.Take, for example, the following exert from Some Do Not, the first book in Ford Madox Ford's tetralogy, Parade's End.
The central protagonist, Christopher Tietjens, is having a conversation with the head of his bank, Lord Port Sactho, about the mis-management of the former's account. An employee of the bank (Port Scatho's nephew) has been meddling with Christopher's account in an attempt to 'ruin' Christopher's reputation and steal his wife, Sylvia, away from him:
"But good God," the banker said. "That means your ruin."
"It certainly means my ruin," Tietjens said. "It was meant to."
"But," the banker said - a look of relief came into his face which had begun to assume the aspect of a broken man's - "you must have other accounts with the bank . . . a speculative one, perhaps, on which you are heavily down. . . . I don't myself attend to client's accounts, except the very huge ones, which affect the bank's policy."
"You ought to," Tietjens said. "It's the very little ones you ought to attend to, as a gentleman making his fortune out of them. [. . .]"
It would appear then, from the above, that not a lot has changed in banking policy and attitudes over the last 90 or so years.
