In my next chapter I shall present Squire Hazeldean in patriarchal
state,--not exactly under the fig-tree he has planted, but before the
stocks he has reconstructed,--Squire Hazeldean and his family on the
village green! The canvas is all ready for the colours.
But in this chapter I must so far afford a glimpse into antecedents as to
let the reader know that there is one member of the family whom he is not
likely to meet at present, if ever, on the village green at Hazeldean.
Our squire lost his father two years after his birth; his mother was very
handsome--and so was her jointure; she married again at the expiration of
her year of mourning; the object of her second choice was Colonel
Egerton.
In every generation of Englishmen (at least since the lively reign of
Charles II.) there are a few whom some elegant Genius skims off from the
milk of human nature, and reserves for the cream of society. Colonel
Egerton was one of these /terque quaterque beati/, and dwelt apart on a
top shelf in that delicate porcelain dish--not bestowed upon vulgar
buttermilk--which persons of fashion call The Great World. Mighty was
the marvel of Pall Mall, and profound was the pity of Park Lane, when
this supereminent personage condescended to lower himself into a husband.
But Colonel Egerton was not a mere gaudy butterfly; he had the provident
instincts ascribed to the bee. Youth had passed from him, and carried
off much solid property in its flight; he saw that a time was fast coming
when a home, with a partner who could help to maintain it, would be
conducive to his comforts, and an occasional hum-drum evening by the
fireside beneficial to his health. In the midst of one season at
Brighton, to which gay place he had accompanied the Prince of Wales, he
saw a widow, who, though in the weeds of mourning, did not appear
inconsolable. Her person pleased his taste; the accounts of her jointure
satisfied his understanding; he contrived an introduction, and brought a
brief wooing to a happy close. The late Mr. Hazeldean had so far
anticipated the chance of the young widow's second espousals, that, in
case of that event, he transferred, by his testamentary dispositions, the
guardianship of his infant heir from the mother to two squires whom he
had named his executors. This circumstance combined with her new ties
somewhat to alienate Mrs. Hazeldean from the pledge of her former loves;
and when she had borne a son to Colonel Egerton, it was upon that child
that her maternal affections gradually concentrated.
William Hazeldean was sent by his guardians to a large provincial
academy, at which his forefathers had received their education time out
of mind. At first he spent his holidays with Mrs. Egerton; but as she
now resided either in London, or followed her lord to Brighton, to
partake of the gayeties at the Pavilion, so as he grew older, William,
who had a hearty affection for country life, and of whose bluff manners
and rural breeding Mrs. Egerton (having grown exceedingly refined) was
openly ashamed, asked and obtained permission to spend his vacations
either with his guardians or at the old Hall. He went late to a small
college at Cambridge, endowed in the fifteenth century by some ancestral
Hazeldean; and left it, on coming of age, without taking a degree. A few
years afterwards he married a young lady, country born and bred like
himself.
Meanwhile his half-brother, Audley Egerton, may be said to have begun his
initiation into the /beau monde/ before he had well cast aside his coral
and bells; he had been fondled in the lap of duchesses, and had galloped
across the room astride on the canes of ambassadors and princes. For
Colonel Egerton was not only very highly connected, not only one of the
/Dii majores/ of fashion, but he had the still rarer good fortune to be
an exceedingly popular man with all who knew him,--so popular, that even
the fine ladies whom he had adored and abandoned forgave him for marrying
out of "the set," and continued to be as friendly as if he had not
married at all. People who were commonly called heartless were never
weary of doing kind things to the Egertons. When the time came for
Audley to leave the preparatory school at which his infancy budded forth
amongst the stateliest of the little lilies of the field, and go to Eton,
half the fifth and sixth forms had been canvassed to be exceedingly civil
to young Egerton. The boy soon showed that he inherited his father's
talent for acquiring popularity, and that to this talent he added those
which put popularity to use. Without achieving any scholastic
distinction, he yet contrived to establish at Eton the most desirable
reputation which a boy can obtain,--namely, that among his own
contemporaries, the reputation of a boy who was sure to do something when
he grew to be a man. As a gentleman-commoner at Christ Church, Oxford,
he continued to sustain this high expectation, though he won no prizes,
and took but an ordinary degree; and at Oxford the future "something"
became more defined,--it was "something in public life" that this young
man was to do.
While he was yet at the University, both his parents died, within a few
months of each other. And when Audley Egerton came of age, he succeeded
to a paternal property which was supposed to be large, and indeed had
once been so; but Colonel Egerton had been too lavish a man to enrich his
heir, and about L1500 a year was all that sales and mortgages left of an
estate that had formerly approached a rental of L10,000.
Still, Audley was considered to be opulent; and he did not dispel that
favourable notion by any imprudent exhibition of parsimony. On entering
the world of London, the Clubs flew open to receive him, and he woke one
morning to find himself, not indeed famous--but the fashion. To this
fashion he at once gave a certain gravity and value, he associated as
much as possible with public men and political ladies, he succeeded in
confirming the notion that he was "born to ruin or to rule the State."
The dearest and most intimate friend of Audley Egerton was Lord
L'Estrange, from whom he had been inseparable at Eton, and who now, if
Audley Egerton was the fashion, was absolutely the rage in London.
Harley, Lord L'Estrange, was the only son of the Earl of Lansmere, a
nobleman of considerable wealth, and allied, by intermarriages, to the
loftiest and most powerful families in England. Lord Lansmere,
nevertheless, was but little known in the circles of London. He lived
chiefly on his estates, occupying himself with the various duties of a
great proprietor, and when he came to the metropolis, it was rather to
save than to spend; so that he could afford to give his son a very ample
allowance, when Harley, at the age of sixteen (having already attained to
the sixth form at Eton), left school for one of the regiments of the
Guards.
Few knew what to make of Harley L'Estrange,--and that was, perhaps, the
reason why he was so much thought of. He had been by far the most
brilliant boy of his time at Eton,--not only the boast of the cricket-
ground, but the marvel of the schoolroom; yet so full of whims and
oddities, and seeming to achieve his triumphs with so little aid from
steadfast application, that he had not left behind him the same
expectations of solid eminence which his friend and senior, Audley
Egerton, had excited. His eccentricities, his quaint sayings, and out-
of-the-way actions, became as notable in the great world as they had been
in the small one of a public school. That he was very clever there was
no doubt, and that the cleverness was of a high order might be surmised,
not only from the originality but the independence of his character. He
dazzled the world, without seeming to care for its praise or its
censure,--dazzled it, as it were, because he could not help shining. He
had some strange notions, whether political or social, which rather
frightened his father. According to Southey, "A man should be no more
ashamed of having been a republican than of having been young." Youth
and extravagant opinions naturally go together. I don't know whether
Harley L'Estrange was a republican at the age of eighteen; but there was
no young man in London who seemed to care less for being heir to an
illustrious name and some forty or fifty thousand pounds a year. It was
a vulgar fashion in that day to play the exclusive, and cut persons who
wore bad neckcloths, and called themselves Smith or Johnson. Lord
L'Estrange never cut any one, and it was quite enough to slight some
worthy man because of his neckcloth or his birth to insure to the
offender the pointed civilities of this eccentric successor to the
Belforts and the Wildairs.
It was the wish of his father that Harley, as soon as he came of age,
should represent the borough of Lansmere (which said borough was the
single plague of the earl's life). But this wish was never realized.
Suddenly, when the young idol of London still wanted some two or three
years of his majority, a new whim appeared to seize him. He withdrew
entirely from society; he left unanswered the most pressing three-
cornered notes of inquiry and invitation that ever strewed the table of a
young Guardsman; he was rarely seen anywhere in his former haunts,--when
seen, was either alone or with Egerton; and his gay spirits seemed wholly
to have left him. A profound melancholy was written in his countenance,
and breathed in the listless tones of his voice. About this time a
vacancy happening to occur for the representation of Lansmere, Harley
made it his special request to his father that the family interest might
be given to Audley Egerton,--a request which was backed by all the
influence of his lady mother, who shared in the esteem which her son felt
for his friend. The earl yielded; and Egerton, accompanied by Harley,
went down to Lansmere Park, which adjoined the borough, in order to be
introduced to the electors. This visit made a notable epoch in the
history of many personages who figure in my narrative; but at present I
content myself with saying that circumstances arose which, just as the
canvass for the new election commenced, caused both L'Estrange and Audley
to absent themselves from the scene of action, and that the last even
wrote to Lord Lansmere expressing his intention of declining to contest
the borough.
Fortunately for the parliamentary career of Audley Egerton, the election
had become to Lord Lansmere not only a matter of public importance, but
of personal feeling. He resolved that the battle should be fought out,
even in the absence of the candidate, and at his own expense. Hitherto
the contest for this distinguished borough had been, to use the language
of Lord Lansmere, "conducted in the spirit of gentlemen,"--that is to
say, the only opponents to the Lansmere interest had been found in one or
the other of the two rival families in the same county; and as the earl
was a hospitable, courteous man, much respected and liked by the
neighbouring gentry, so the hostile candidate had always interlarded his
speeches with profuse compliments to his Lordship's high character, and
civil expressions as to his Lordship's candidate. But, thanks to
successive elections, one of these two families had come to an end, and
its actual representative was now residing within the Rules of the Bench;
the head of the other family was the sitting member, and, by an amicable
agreement with the Lansinere interest, he remained as neutral as it is in
the power of any sitting member to be amidst the passions of an
intractable committee. Accordingly it had been hoped that Egerton would
come in without opposition, when, the very day on which he had abruptly
left the place, a handbill, signed "Haverill Dashmore, Captain R. N.,
Baker Street, Portman Square," announced, in very spirited language, the
intention of that gentleman "to emancipate the borough from the
unconstitutional domination of an oligarchical faction, not with a view
to his own political aggrandizement,--indeed at great personal
inconvenience,--but actuated solely by abhorrence to tyranny, and
patriotic passion for the purity of election."
This announcement was followed, within two hours, by the arrival of
Captain Dashmore himself, in a carriage and four, covered with yellow
favours, and filled, inside and out, with harumscarum-looking friends,
who had come down with him to share the canvass and partake the fun.
Captain Dashmore was a thorough sailor, who had, however, conceived a
disgust to the profession from the date in which a minister's nephew had
been appointed to the command of a ship to which the captain considered
himself unquestionably entitled. It is just to the minister to add that
Captain Dashmore had shown as little regard for orders from a distance as
had immortalized Nelson himself; but then the disobedience had not
achieved the same redeeming success as that of Nelson, and Captain
Dashmore ought to have thought himself fortunate in escaping a severer
treatment than the loss of promotion. But no man knows when he is well
off; and retiring on half pay, just as he came into unexpected possession
of some forty or fifty thousand pounds, bequeathed by a distant relation,
Captain Dashmore was seized with a vindictive desire to enter parliament,
and inflict oratorical chastisement on the Administration.
A very few hours sufficed to show the sea-captain to be a most capital
electioneerer for a popular but not enlightened constituency. It is true
that he talked the saddest nonsense ever heard from an open window; but
then his jokes were so broad, his manner so hearty, his voice so big,
that in those dark days, before the schoolmaster was abroad, he would
have beaten your philosophical Radical and moralizing Democrat hollow.
Moreover, he kissed all the women, old and young, with the zest of a
sailor who has known what it is to be three years at sea without sight of
a beardless lip; he threw open all the public-houses, asked a numerous
committee every day to dinner, and, chucking his purse up in the air,
declared "he would stick to his guns while there was a shot in the
locker." Till then, there had been but little political difference
between the candidate supported by Lord Lansmere's interest and the
opposing parties; for country gentlemen, in those days, were pretty much
of the same way of thinking, and the question had been really local,--
namely, whether the Lansmere interest should or should not prevail over
that of the two squire-archical families who had alone, hitherto,
ventured to oppose it. But though Captain Dashmore was really a very
loyal man, and much too old a sailor to think that the State (which,
according to established metaphor, is a vessel par excellence) should
admit Jack upon quarterdeck, yet, what with talking against lords and
aristocracy, jobs and abuses, and searching through no very refined
vocabulary for the strongest epithets to apply to those irritating nouns-
substantive, his bile had got the better of his understanding, and he
became fuddled, as it were, by his own eloquence. Thus, though as
innocent of Jacobinical designs as he was incapable of setting the Thames
on fire, you would have guessed him, by his speeches, to be one of the
most determined incendiaries that ever applied a match to the combustible
materials of a contested election; while, being by no means accustomed to
respect his adversaries, he could not have treated the Earl of Lansmere
with less ceremony if his Lordship had been a Frenchman. He usually
designated that respectable nobleman, who was still in the prime of life,
by the title of "Old Pompous;" and the mayor, who was never seen abroad
but in top-boots, and the solicitor, who was of a large build, received
from his irreverent wit the joint sobriquet of "Tops and Bottoms"! Hence
the election had now become, as I said before, a personal matter with my
Lord, and, indeed, with the great heads of the Lansmere interest. The
earl seemed to consider his very coronet at stake in the question. "The
Man from Baker Street," with his preternatural audacity, appeared to him
a being ominous and awful--not so much to be regarded with resentment as
with superstitious terror. He felt as felt the dignified Montezuma, when
that ruffianly Cortez, with his handful of Spanish rapscallions, bearded
him in his own capital, and in the midst of his Mexican splendour. The
gods were menaced if man could be so insolent! wherefore, said my Lord
tremulously, "The Constitution is gone if the Man from Baker Street comes
in for Lansmere!"
But in the absence of Audley Egerton, the election looked extremely ugly,
and Captain Dashmore gained ground hourly, when the Lansmere solicitor
happily bethought him of a notable proxy for the missing candidate. The
Squire of Hazeldean, with his young wife, had been invited by the earl in
honour of Audley; and in the squire the solicitor beheld the only mortal
who could cope with the sea-captain,--a man with a voice as burly and a
face as bold; a man who, if permitted for the nonce by Mrs. Hazeldean,
would kiss all the women no less heartily than the captain kissed them;
and who was, moreover, a taller and a handsomer and a younger man,--all
three great recommendations in the kissing department of a contested
election. Yes, to canvass the borough, and to speak from the window,
Squire Hazeldean would be even more popularly presentable than the
London-bred and accomplished Audley Egerton himself.
The squire, applied to and urged on all sides, at first said bluntly that
he would do anything in reason to serve his brother, but that he did not
like, for his own part, appearing, even in proxy, as a lord's nominee;
and moreover, if he was to be sponsor for his brother, why, he must
promise and vow, in his name, to be stanch and true to the land they
lived by! And how could he tell that Audley, when once he got into the
House, would not forget the land, and then he, William Hazeldean, would
be made a liar, and look like a turncoat!
But these scruples being overruled by the arguments of the gentlemen and
the entreaties of the ladies, who took in the election that intense
interest which those gentle creatures usually do take in all matters of
strife and contest, the squire at length consented to confront the Man
from Baker Street, and went accordingly into the thing with that good
heart and old English spirit with which he went into everything whereon
he had once made up his mind.
The expectations formed of the squire's capacities for popular
electioneering were fully realized. He talked quite as much nonsense as
Captain Dashmore on every subject except the landed interest; there he
was great, for he knew the subject well,--knew it by the instinct that
comes with practice, and compared to which all your showy theories are
mere cobwebs and moonshine.
The agricultural outvoters--many of whom, not living under Lord Lansmere,
but being small yeomen, had hitherto prided themselves on their
independence, and gone against my Lord--could not in their hearts go
against one who was every inch the farmer's friend. They began to share
in the earl's personal interest against the Man from Baker Street; and
big fellows, with legs bigger round than Captain Dashmore's tight little
body, and huge whips in their hands, were soon seen entering the shops,
"intimidating the electors," as Captain Dashmore indignantly declared.
These new recruits made a great difference in the musterroll of the
Lansmere books; and when the day for polling arrived, the result was a
fair question for even betting. At the last hour, after a neck-and-neck
contest, Mr. Audley Egerton beat the captain by two votes; and the names
of these voters were John Avenel, resident freeman, and his son-in-law,
Mark Fairfield, an outvoter, who, though a Lansmere freeman, had settled
in Hazeldean, where he had obtained the situation of head carpenter on
the squire's estate.
These votes were unexpected; for though Mark Fairfield had come to
Lansmere on purpose to support the squire's brother, and though the
Avenels had been always stanch supporters of the Lansmere Blue interest,
yet a severe affliction (as to the nature of which, not desiring to
sadden the opening of my story, I am considerately silent) had befallen
both these persons, and they had left the town on the very day after Lord
L'Estrange and Mr. Egerton had quitted Lansmere Park.
Whatever might have been the gratification of the squire, as a canvasser
and a brother, at Mr. Egerton's triumph, it was much damped when, on
leaving the dinner given in honour of the victory at the Lansmere Arms,
and about, with no steady step, to enter a carriage which was to convey
him to his Lordship's house, a letter was put into his hands by one of
the gentlemen who had accompanied the captain to the scene of action; and
the perusal of that letter, and a few whispered words from the bearer
thereof, sent the squire back to Mrs. Hazeldean a much soberer man than
she had ventured to hope for. The fact was, that on the day of
nomination, the captain having honoured Mr. Hazeldean with many poetical
and figurative appellations,--such as "Prize Ox," "Tony Lumpkin," "Blood-
sucking Vampire," and "Brotherly Warming-Pan,"--the squire had retorted
by a joke about "Saltwater Jack;" and the captain, who like all satirists
was extremely susceptible and thin-skinned, could not consent to be
called "Salt-water Jack" by a "Prize Ox" and a "Bloodsucking Vampire."
The letter, therefore, now conveyed to Mr. Hazeldean by a gentleman, who,
being from the Sister Country, was deemed the most fitting accomplice in
the honourable destruction of a brother mortal, contained nothing more
nor less than an invitation to single combat; and the bearer thereof,
with the suave politeness enjoined by etiquette on such well-bred
homicidal occasions, suggested the expediency of appointing the place of
meeting in the neighbourhood of London, in order to prevent interference
from the suspicious authorities of Lansmere.
The natives of some countries--the warlike French in particular--think
little of that formal operation which goes by the name of DUELLING.
Indeed, they seem rather to like it than otherwise. But there is nothing
your thorough-paced Englishman--a Hazeldean of Hazeldean--considers with
more repugnance and aversion than that same cold-blooded ceremonial. It
is not within the range of an Englishman's ordinary habits of thinking.
He prefers going to law,--a much more destructive proceeding of the two.
Nevertheless, if an Englishman must fight, why, he will fight. He says
"It is very foolish;" he is sure "it is most unchristianlike;" he agrees
with all that Philosophy, Preacher, and Press have laid down on the
subject; but he makes his will, says his prayers, and goes out--like a
heathen.
It never, therefore, occurred to the squire to show the white feather
upon this unpleasant occasion. The next day, feigning excuse to attend
the sale of a hunting stud at Tattersall's, he ruefully went up to
London, after taking a peculiarly affectionate leave of his wife.
Indeed, the squire felt convinced that he should never return home except
in a coffin. "It stands to reason," said he to himself, "that a man who
has been actually paid by the King's Government for shooting people ever
since he was a little boy in a midshipman's jacket, must be a dead hand
at the job. I should not mind if it was with double-barrelled Mantons
and small shot; but ball and pistol, they are n't human nor
sportsmanlike!" However, the squire, after settling his worldly affairs,
and hunting up an old college friend who undertook to be his second,
proceeded to a sequestered corner of Wimbledon Common, and planted
himself, not sideways, as one ought to do in such encounters (the which
posture the squire swore was an unmanly way of shirking), but full front
to the mouth of his adversary's pistol, with such sturdy composure that
Captain Dashmore, who, though an excellent shot, was at bottom as good-
natured a fellow as ever lived, testified his admiration by letting off
his gallant opponent with a ball in the fleshy part of the shoulder,
after which he declared himself perfectly satisfied. The parties then
shook hands, mutual apologies were exchanged, and the squire, much to his
astonishment to find himself still alive, was conveyed to Limmer's Hotel,
where, after a considerable amount of anguish, the ball was extracted and
the wound healed. Now it was all over, the squire felt very much raised
in his own conceit; and when he was in a humour more than ordinarily
fierce, that perilous event became a favourite allusion with him.
He considered, moreover, that his brother had incurred at his hand the
most lasting obligations; and that, having procured Audley's return to
parliament, and defended his interests at risk of his own life, he had an
absolute right to dictate to that gentleman how to vote,--upon all
matters, at least, connected with the landed interest. And when, not
very long after Audley took his seat in parliament (which he did not do
for some months), he thought proper both to vote and to speak in a manner
wholly belying the promises the squire had made on his behalf, Mr.
Hazeldean wrote him such a trimmer that it could not but produce an
unconciliatory reply. Shortly afterwards the squire's exasperation
reached the culminating point; for, having to pass through Lansmere on a
market-day, he was hooted by the very farmers whom he had induced to vote
for his brother; and, justly imputing the disgrace to Audley, he never
heard the name of that traitor to the land mentioned without a heightened
colour and an indignant expletive. M. de Ruqueville--who was the
greatest wit of his day--had, like the squire, a half-brother, with whom
he was not on the best of terms, and of whom he always spoke as his
"frere de loin!" Audley Egerton was thus Squire Hazeldean's "distant-
brother"!
Enough of these explanatory antecedents,--let us return to the stocks.