DOWN AT BISSETT.
At the very first sign of the season's breaking up, Sir Marmaduke
Wentworth was in the habit of leaving his town-house in Curzon Street,
and proceeding to his country-seat of Bissett Grange. Gumble, his
butler and body-servant, was the first person officially informed of
the intended flight; but long before his master spoke to him, that
far-seeing man had made up his mind, and arranged his plans
accordingly. "Flitherses gone to-day, eh!" he would say to himself,
as, in the calm, cool evening, he lounged against the jams of the
street-door (Gumble was never seen in the area) and looked up to the
opposite house. "Shutters up, and Flitherses hoff! Some German bath or
other, no doubt; elber-shakin' for the old man, and forrin' counts for
the young ladies. Lord Charles leff last week; he'll be takin' his
rubber at Spaw now as natural as at the Club. The old Berrin has been
sent away somewheres; and I'll bet a pound in two days my guv'nor says
Hoff!" And he would have won his bet. So soon as there was the
slightest appearance of a move among the people of his circle; so soon
as he found "shall have left town" given as an answer to an invite to
one of his cosey little dinners; before Goodwood afforded the
pleasantest excuse for the laziest of racing and the happiest of
lunching; while flannel-clad gentlemen yet perspired copiously at
Lord's, defending the wickets of Marylebone against the predatory
incursions of "Perambulators" or "Eccentrics;" when Finsburyites were
returning from their fortnight at Ramsgate, and while Dalstonians yet
lingered on the pier at Southend,--old Marmaduke Wentworth would give
his household brigade the order to retreat, and, at their head, would
march down upon Bissett Grange.
And he was right; for there was not a nobler old house, nor prettier
grounds, in the broad county of Sussex, where it stood. Contrast is
the great thing, after all: tall men marry short women; the most
thickset nursery-maids struggle a-tiptoe to keep step with the
lengthiest members of the Foot-Guards; Plimnims the poet, who is of
the Sybarite-roseleaf order, sighs for Miss Crupper the _écuyère_, who
calls a horse an oss, and a donkey a hass; and so you, if you had been
staying at Brighton, and had gone on an excursion at half-a-crown an
hour into the inner country, would have fallen in love with Bissett
Grange. For, weary of the perpetual hoarse murmur of the sea, now
thundering its rage in tremendous waves, now shrieking its lamentation
in long hissing back currents; sick of the monotony of the
"long-backed bushless downs," so cold and bare and wind-swept, echoing
to the eternal plaint of the curlew, and shutting off the horizon with
a dreary never-ending shoulder-blade of blank turf,--you, if you were
lucky in your choice, and had a driver with a soul beyond the Steine
and aspirations exceeding the Lewes Road, would have come upon, at a
distance of some five miles from Brighton, a little one-storied
porter's lodge, nestling in ivy so deep that the dear parasite had it
in its embrace, chimneys and all. Big, heavy, and wooden were the
lodge-gates; none of your pretty, light, elegant Coalbrookdale
innovations. Gates, in Sir Marmaduke Wentworth's idea, were things to
keep impertinent prying people out; and as such they could not be made
too cumbrous or too opaque for his pleasure. They were very high as
well as very heavy; so, if you had come with your 'cute driver in your
fly excursion, you would have seen nothing but the quaint twisted
chimneys; and even for that view you must have mounted unto the box.
Save the friends of the owner, no one, in Marmaduke Wentworth's time,
had ever passed the lodge, or rather, I should say, reached the house.
Visitors to. Brighton and Worthing, dying of _ennui_, had besieged the
lodge' and implored permission to walk in the grounds; artists had
asked to be allowed to sketch the house; a "gentleman engaged upon the
press" had written to say that he was sure there must be a legend
connected with some chamber, if he might only be permitted to explore
the mansion; and one man, a photographer, bribed the lodge-keeper's
grand-daughter with a piece of elecampane, and, in the absence of the
legitimate portress passed the gate. He had proceeded about a couple
of hundred yards up the avenue, when he was met by Sir Marmaduke, who
had just turned out for his leisurely afternoon ride. The sight of the
itinerant professor with his travelling camera roused the old
gentleman in an instant; he set spurs to his cob, hurried off to the
intruder, and tapped him smartly on the back with his whip. One
instant's glance revealed to him the whole affair: it was _not_ a
travelling Punch, whom he would have sent into the kitchen; it was
_not_ a man from the Missionary Society, whom he would have had ducked
in the pond; it was--_tant soit peu_--an artist; and for art of any
kind, however humble, old Marmaduke had a regard. So when the
trembling man looked up, and, divided between a notion of "cheeking
the swell," or being impudent, and running away, or being cowardly,
hit upon a middle course, and, guarding his head, at which nothing had
been aimed, exclaimed, "Now, then! What are you at? Who's hurting
you?" all the old gentleman did was to bend from his saddle, to seize
the intruder by the lobe of his ear, to turn him completely round,
and, pointing to the gate, to utter in a hissing whisper the phrase
"Go away, man!"
When the photographer attempted to explain, the ear-pressure was
intensified, and the "Go away, man!" uttered more loudly; at the third
repetition, the photographer wrung his ear from the old gentleman's
fingers, and ran away abjectly.
"Collodion and Clumpsoles; or, the Homes of the British Aristocracy in
the Camera: being Reminiscences of a Peripatetic Photographer,"
therefore, contained no view of Bissett Grange; which was to be
regretted, as neither The Hassocks, the Rector's residence, nor The
Radishes, the seat of Sir Hipson Hawes, the lord of the manor, both of
which figured extensively in the photographic publication, was to be
compared with Marmaduke Wentworth's ancestral mansion. The elm-avenue
extended from the lodge to the house,--nearly half a mile,--and
through the trees you saw the broad expanse of the park, covered with
that beautiful soft turf which is in the highest perfection in Sussex,
and which afforded pasture for hundreds of dappled deer, who would
raise their heads at the sound of approaching footsteps or
carriage-wheels, and, after peering forward earnestly with
outstretched necks at the intrusion, would wheel round and start off
at a peculiar sling trot, gradually merging into the most graceful of
gallops.
Immediately in front of the porch, and only divided from it by the
carriage-sweep, was an enormous flower-bed, sloping towards the sides,
and culminating in the centre,--the pride of the head-gardener's soul.
Right and left of the house were two arches, exactly alike. Passing
through that to the left, you came upon the stables and coach-houses,
of which there is little to be said, save that they were
old-fashioned, and what the helpers called "ill-conwenient;" and that
the fine London grooms who came down with their master's hacks and
carriage-horses in the autumn--Sir Marmaduke was never at Bissett
during the hunting season--used to curse them freely as a set of
tumbledown old sheds, fit only for jobs and fly-'osses. And yet the
old quadrangle, environed by the stable-buildings, with their
red-tiled roofs and their slate-coloured half-hatch doors, each duly
bearing its horse-shoe and its hecatomb of mouse and stoat skeletons,
was picturesque, more especially of an evening, when the setting
sun gleamed on the quaint old clock-turret, ivy-covered and
swallow-haunted, and steeped in a rich crimson glow the pretty cottage
of old Martin, erst head-groom, now a superannuated pensioner Martin,
who was never so happy as when babbling of bygone days, and who
"minded the time" when the stables were full of blood horses, and when
Master Marmaduke (the present proprietor) rode Saucy Sally over all
the raspers in the county.
Through the other arch you came upon the gardens of the Grange.
Immediately before you lay a broad expanse of lawn,--such smooth, soft
turf as is only met with in England, and only there in well-to-do
places. Short, crisp, and velvety was the grass, kept with the
greatest care, and rolled and mown with the most undeviating
punctuality; for Sir Marmaduke was proud of his lawn, and liked to sit
out there in his high-backed rustic seat on the hot August evenings,
placidly smoking his cigar, and occasionally raising his head to be
fanned by the soft sea-breeze which came blowing over the neighbouring
downs. He would as soon have thought of allowing a servant to take a
liberty with him as of permitting any one to drive a croquet-iron into
that lawn, or to attempt to play any game on it. Between the house and
the lawn ran a broad gravelled walk, passing down which you came upon
the orchard and upon the fig-garden, which was the glory of the
county, and was enclosed with an old red-brick wall, which itself
looked ripe and ruddy. To the right lay the kitchen-garden,--a fertile
slope of land in the highest state of cultivation, dotted every here
and there with huge lights and frames, and spread nets, and overgrown
cucumbers, and bursting marrows; for though Sir Marmaduke cared but
little for flowers, he was a great fruit-grower, and, next to seeing
his pines and melons on his own table (where, glowing on the old
ancestral Wentworth plate, they looked like a study for Lance), his
great gratification was to bear away with them the prizes from the
Horticultural Shows in the neighbourhood. Beyond the orchard was a
large field, known as the Paddock, whither thee croquet-players and
the archers were relegated, and where the turf was almost as smooth as
that of the sacred lawn itself. Over all,--house, lawn, orchard,
kitchen-garden, and paddock, and far away across the surrounding
downs--there was a delicious sense of calm and quiet; a feeling which
was heightened rather than lessened by the inhabitants of a rookery
established in the tall elm-trees bordering the Paddock, and who, as
they sailed over the grounds of the Grange, would express their
approbation by one single solemn caw.
The house faced the avenue, and was a queer, odd, square block, by no
means picturesque, but quaintly ugly something like an old-fashioned
child, whose decidedly curious features, out of all drawing and
impossible to be admired, yet have something humorously lovable in
their expression. A staring red-brick house of Queen Anne's time, that
ought to have been formal, and perhaps had been at some period or
other, but which had undergone so many changes--had had so many gables
put on here, and windows let in there, and rooms added on wherever
they were wanted--as to lose all trace of its original design, and to
have become of a composite style of architecture which would have
driven Mr. Ruskin mad. It was the only gentleman's seat for miles
round which was built of red brick, and not that gray stone which
always looks weather-beaten and time-worn; instead of which, the
Grange had a jolly, cheery, comic expression, and when the sun gleamed
on its little diamond-shaped, leaden-casemented windows, they seemed
to twinkle like the eyes of a genial red-faced old gentleman at some
good joke or pleasant dish. A comfortable old house in every sense of
the word, with an enormous number of rooms, large airy spacious
chambers, queer little nooks and snuggeries, long passages with
pannelled partitions dividing them from other passages, partitions
with occasional square windows or round eyelet-holes cut in them, wide
straggling staircases with broad steps and broad balustrades, which
no boy had ever yet been known to pass without sliding down them on
his stomach. A couple of queer turreted chambers, like the place where
the yard-measure lives in old-fashioned work-boxes, and a set of
attics, low-roofed, and rather worm-eaten and mouldy-smelling. These
were not inhabited, for the servants had their own quarters in the
western wing; a bit of eccentric building, which had been thrown out
long after the original structure, and gave to the old mansion, from
the back view, a comical lopsided appearance; and when the rest of the
house was filled, the bachelors were sent to what was known as the
Barracks, or the Kennel, a series of jolly little rooms shut out from
the respectable portion of the building by a long passage, where they
kept up their own fun till a very late hour of the night, where there
was always an overhanging smell of tobacco, and whence, in the early
mornings, there came such a roaring and clanging of shower-baths, and
such a sound of hissing and sluicing and splashing, that you might
have fancied yourself in the vicinity of an army of Tritons.
Two o'clock on a hot afternoon at the end of September; and, with the
exception of a few sportsmen, who are now reclining under a high hedge
and lighting pipes, after a succulent repast of game-pie, cold
partridge, and bitter beer, all the party at the Grange is assembled
round the luncheon-table in the dining-room. That is Marmaduke
Wentworth, the tall old man standing on the hearthrug, with his back
towards the empty fire-grate. His head is perfectly bald and shining,
and has but a fringe of crisp white hair; his features are what is
called "aristocratic," well-shaped, and comely; his eyes are cold,
clear, gray; his lips slightly full, and his teeth sound and regular.
He is in his invariable morning dress,--a blue coat with brass
buttons, a buff waistcoat, and gray trousers with gaping dog's-eared
pockets, into which his hands are always plunged. Looking at him now,
you would scarcely recognise the _roué_ of George the Fourth's time,
the Poins to the wild Prince, the hero of a hundred intrigues and
escapades. In heat and turmoil, in drinking, dicing, and dancing,
Marmaduke Wentworth passed his early youth; and from this debauchery
he was rescued by the single passion of his life. The object of that
passion--his cousin, a lovely girl, whose innocence won the dissipated
roisterer from his evil ways, and gave him new notions and new
hopes--died within three months of their engagement; and from that day
Wentworth became another man. He went abroad, and for ten years led a
solitary studious life; returning to England, he brought with him his
bookworm tastes; and it was long before he emerged from the seclusion
of Bissett Grange, which he had inherited, and returned once more to
London life. Even then, he sought his society in a very different set
to that in which he had previously shone. George the Great was dead;
sailor King William had followed him to the grave; and the new men
fluttering round the court of the new Queen, setting fashions and
issuing social ordinances, had been cradled children when Marmaduke
Wentworth had copied Brummel's cravats, or listened to Alvanley's
_bons mots_. Even had he continued a "dandy," he would have been
displeased with the "swells" to whom the dandies had given place; and
now, changed as he was into a disappointed elderly gentleman, with a
bitter tongue and an intolerant spirit, his unsocial cynicism bored
the new men, while their slangy flippancy disgusted him. So, in the
phrase of the day, he "went in for a new excitement;" and, though his
name and his appearance were as well known in London as those of the
Duke of Wellington, there were but few people of his own status or
time of life who were retained on an intimate footing. Some few old
friends, who themselves had suffered heart-shipwreck, or seen their
argosies of early feelings go down in sight of port, claimed
companionship with the querulous, crotchety companion of their youth,
and had their claims allowed. His odd, quaint savagery, his utter
contempt for the recognised laws of politeness, his free speaking, and
his general eccentricity, had a great charm for young people of both
sexes; and if they had any thing in them to elevate them above the
ordinary run of yea-and-nay young persons, they invariably found their
advances responded to. Then there was a great attraction for young
people in the society which they met at one of Marmaduke's
dinners--men whose names were before the world; an occasional
cabinet-minister sweetening the severities of office with a little
pleasant relaxation in company where he might take the mask from his
face and the gag from his mouth; authors of note; rising artists;
occasionally an actor or two,--all these were to be found round
Wentworth's table. The old gentleman was in London from January to
July. During that time he gave four dinner-parties a week (one of
them, I regret to say, and generally the pleasantest, on a Sunday),
and during the other three days dined out. He was a member of the
True-Blue and the Minerva Clubs, but seldom went to either; he was
admissible by the hall-porter of every theatre in London, and
sometimes strayed behind the scenes and took possession of the
green-room hearthrug, whence he vented remarkably free and
discriminating criticisms on the actors and actresses surrounding him.
He had one special butt, an old German baron of fabulous age, who was
supposed to have been a page to Frederick the Great, who had been for
thirty years in England, and had only acquired the very smallest
knowledge of its language, and whose power of placidly enduring savage
attacks was only equalled by the vigour of his appetite. The Baron was
never brought down to Bissett; but, as we have heard from Gumble, was
sent off to some seaside place to recruit his digestion; whence he
invariably turned up again in Curzon Street in January, with the same
wig, the same dyed beard, the same broken English, and an appetite, if
any thing, improved by his marine sojourn.
There is a strange medley now collected at the Grange. That tall girl,
seated at the far end of the table, with her chin leaning on her hand,
is Barbara Lexden. Three years ago, when, at nineteen, she was
presented, she created a _furore_; and even now, though her first
freshness is gone, she is even more beautiful--has rounded
and ripened, and holds her own with the best in town. More
_distingué_-looking than beautiful, though, is Barbara. Het face is a
little too long for perfect oval; her nose is very slightly aquiline,
with delicately curved, thin, transparent nostrils; her forehead
marked with two deep lines, from a curious trick of elevating her
eyebrows when surprised, and shaded with broad thick masses of
dark-brown hair, bound tightly round her head, taken off behind her
ears,--small, and glistening like pink shells,--and terminating in a
thick plaited clump; sleepy, greenish-gray eyes, with long drooping
lashes; a tall, undulating, pear-shaped figure, always seen to best
advantage in a tight-fitting dress, with a neat little collar and
nun-like simple linen cuffs; a swimming walk; feet and ankles beyond
compare; and hands--ah, such hands!--not plump, slender, with long
fingers, and rosy filbert nails; such hands as Ninon de l'Enclos might
have had, but such as, save on Barbara, I have only seen in wax, on
black velvet, under a glass case, modelled from Lady Blessington's,
and purchased at the Gore-House Sale. Blue was her favourite colour,
violet her favourite perfume, admiration the longing of her soul. She
was never happy until every one with whom she was brought into contact
had given in their submission to her. No matter of what age or in what
condition of life, all must bow. Once, during a Commemoration Week at
Oxford, she completely turned various hoary heads of houses, and
caused the wife of an eminent Church dignitary, after thirty years of
happy marriage, to bedew her pillow with tears of bitter jealousy at
seeing how completely the courteous old dean was fascinated by the
lovely visitor; and she would laugh with saucy triumph as she heard
the blunt, outspoken admiration of working-men as she sat well forward
in the carriage blocked up in St. James's Street on a Drawing-room
day, or slowly creeping along the line of vehicles which were "setting
down" at the Horticultural-Gardens gates.
With the exception of flirtation, in which she would have taken the
highest honours, her accomplishments were neither more nor less than
those of most women of her position. She played brilliantly, with a
firm, dashing touch, and sang, perhaps not artistically, but with an
amount of feeling thrown into her deep contralto that did frightful
execution; her French was very good; her German passable, grammatical,
and well phrased, but lacking the real rough accent and guttural
smack. At all events, she had made the most of what schooling she had
had, for it was desultory enough. Her father, the youngest son of a
good family, ran away with the black-eyed, ruddy-cheeked daughter of
the Herefordshire parson with whom he went to read during the Long
Vacation; was immediately disinherited by his father; left the
University, and by the influence of his family got into a Government
office; where, by his own exertions, he got into bad company, into
debt, and into prison. On his deathbed he commended his wife and
daughter to the care of his elder sister, who had never married, but
lived very comfortably on the property which ought to have been his.
Miss Lexden came once to see her brother's widow and orphan in the
lodgings which they had taken in Lambeth to be near the King's Bench
Prison. But years of trouble had not changed the poor mother for the
better, and her stately sister-in-law regarded her with horror. In
truth, the colour had faded from her rosy cheeks, and the light died
out of her black eyes long ago, and had left her a dowdy, silly, fussy
little woman, with nothing to say. So Miss Lexden thought she could
best fulfil her brother's charge with least trouble to herself by
allowing the bereaved ones fifty pounds a year; and on this, and what
she could make by working for the Berlin-wool and fancy-stationery
shops, the widow supported herself and her child for some twelve
years, when she died. Miss Lexden then took the child to the dull,
stately old house in Gloucester Place, Portman Square; where, with the
aid of a toady, the daily visit of a smug physician, an airing in a
roomy old carriage drawn by a couple of fat horses, a great deal of
good eating and drinking, and a tolerable amount of society, she
managed to lead a jolly godless old life. She found her niece, then
fourteen years old, less ignorant and more presentable than she had
imagined; for Barbara had received from her mother a sound English
education, and had, on the pea-and-pigeon principle, picked lip a
little French and the rudiments of music. She looked and moved like a
lady, and moreover had an insolence of manner, a _de haut en bas_
treatment of nearly every body, which the old lady hailed as a true
Lexden characteristic, and rejoiced over greatly. So Barbara was sent
to Paris for three years, and came back at seventeen finished in
education, ripened in beauty, and a thorough coquette at heart. Of
course she had already had several _affaires_: several with the
professors attached to the Champs-Elysées _pension_; one with an
Italian count, who bribed the ladies'-maid to convey notes, and who
was subsequently thrashed and instructed in the _savate_ by the
Auvergnat porter of the establishment; and one with an English
gentleman coming over from Boulogne; and her aunt used to encourage
her to tell of these, and would laugh at them until the tears came
into her eyes.
At nineteen she was presented, made her _coup_, and now for two
seasons had been a reigning belle. Offers she had had in
plenty,--youthful peers with slender incomes; middle-aged commoners,
solemn, wealthy, and dull; smug widowers, hoping to renew the sweets
of matrimony, and trusting to bygone experience to keep clear of its
bitters. But Barbara refused them all; played with them, landed
them,--giving them all the time the most pleasurable sensations of
encouragement, as old Izaak used to tickle trout,--and then flung them
back, bruised and gasping, into that muddy stream the world. She told
her aunt she was playing for a high stake; that she did not care for
any of these men; that she did not think she ever should care for any
one; under which circumstances she had better make the best bargain of
herself, and go at a high price. There are plenty of women like this.
We rave against cruel parents and sordid Mammon-matches; but very
often the parents are merely passive in the matter. There are plenty
of girls who have walnuts, or peach stones, or something equally
impressible, where their hearts should be, who have never experienced
the smallest glimmer of love, and who look upon the possession of a
carriage and an Opera-box, and admission into high society, as the
acme of human enjoyment.
Sitting next to Barbara is Fred Lyster, a slim, dark man, with small
regular features and a splendid flowing black beard. He was educated
at Addiscombe, and was out in India under Gough and Outram; did good
service, was highly thought of, and was thoroughly happy; when his old
godfather died, and left him heir to a property of three thousand a
year. He returned at once to England, and became the most idle,
purposeless, dreamiest of men. He had tried every thing, and found it
all hollow. He had travelled on the Continent, been on the turf,
gambled in stocks and railways, kept a yacht, and was bored by each
and all. He had thought of going into Parliament, and went for two
nights into the Speaker's Gallery; but did not pursue the idea,
because he found that "the fellows talked so much." His plaintive
moans against life were sources of intense amusement to his friends;
and when he discovered this--which he did at once, being a very long
way from a fool--he was not in the least annoyed, but rather lent
himself to the idea, and heightened his expressions of _ennui_ and
despondency. He liked to be with Sir Marmaduke; for the old
gentleman's brusque manners and general intolerance afforded him real
amusement, and he laid himself open to attack by always being more
than ever drawling and inane when in his company. The baronet, who had
a quick perception of character, knew Lyster's real worth, and often
talked to him seriously about having some purpose in life; and when he
only got vague and dreamy replies, he would burst out into a torrent
of invective, in the middle of which Lyster would run, shrieking with
laughter, from the room.
Next to Captain Lyster sits Miss Lexden, Barbara's aunt; a fat,
placid-looking old lady, in a flaxen front, which, with a cap covered
with ribbons and flowers, seemed skewered on to her skull by a couple
of large pins, the knobs of which presented themselves like bosses on
her temples. She was a cousin of Sir Marmaduke's, and the elder sister
of the old man's one love, so that there was a great link of
confidence between them; and she liked coming to Bissett, where the
living was always so good, and where she met people who amused her.
That pretty girl talking to her is Miss Townshend,--a delicious
creature in a country-house, who can ride across country, and play
croquet and billiards, and sing little French _chansons_, and dance,
and who even has been known on occasions to drive a dog-cart and smoke
a cigarette. To secure her, entails inviting her father, an intensely
respectable, dreary old gentleman--that is he, in the starched check
cravat and the high coat-collar; a City magnate, who confines his
reading to the City article, and has to be promptly extinguished when
he attempts to talk about the "policy of Rooshia." He is endeavouring
just now to strike up a conversation with his neighbour Mr. Vincent,
the member for Wessex, and Chairman of the Dinner-Committee of the
House of Commons; but Mr. Vincent is deep in the discussion of a
cheese-omelette, and is telegraphing recommendation thereof to Mrs.
Vincent, a merry, red-faced looking little woman, who, with her
husband, passed her whole life in thinking about good eating. Sir
Marmaduke's solicitor, Mr. Russell, a quiet old gentleman, clad in
professional black, who was always trying to hide his soft wrinkled
hands under his ample coat-cuffs; and Sir Marmaduke's factotum,
Major Stone, otherwise Twenty Stone, a big, broad-chested, jovial,
bushy-whiskered, moneyless freelance,--completed the party.