CHAPTER I.

SIR PETER CHILLINGLY, of Exmundham, Baronet, F.R.S. and F.A.S., was the

representative of an ancient family, and a landed proprietor of some

importance. He had married young; not from any ardent inclination for

the connubial state, but in compliance with the request of his parents.

They took the pains to select his bride; and if they might have chosen

better, they might have chosen worse, which is more than can be said for

many men who choose wives for themselves. Miss Caroline Brotherton was

in all respects a suitable connection. She had a pretty fortune, which

was of much use in buying a couple of farms, long desiderated by the

Chillinglys as necessary for the rounding of their property into a

ring-fence. She was highly connected, and brought into the county that

experience of fashionable life acquired by a young lady who has attended

a course of balls for three seasons, and gone out in matrimonial

honours, with credit to herself and her chaperon. She was handsome

enough to satisfy a husband’s pride, but not so handsome as to keep

perpetually on the _qui vive_ a husband’s jealousy. She was considered

highly accomplished; that is, she played upon the pianoforte so that any

musician would say she “was very well taught;” but no musician would

go out of his way to hear her a second time. She painted in

water-colours--well enough to amuse herself. She knew French and Italian

with an elegance so lady-like that, without having read more than

selected extracts from authors in those languages, she spoke them both

with an accent more correct than we have any reason to attribute to

Rousseau or Ariosto. What else a young lady may acquire in order to be

styled highly accomplished I do not pretend to know; but I am sure that

the young lady in question fulfilled that requirement in the opinion

of the best masters. It was not only an eligible match for Sir

Peter Chillingly,--it was a brilliant match. It was also a very

unexceptionable match for Miss Caroline Brotherton. This excellent

couple got on together as most excellent couples do. A short time after

marriage, Sir Peter, by the death of his parents--who, having married

their heir, had nothing left in life worth the trouble of living

for--succeeded to the hereditary estates; he lived for nine months of

the year at Exmundham, going to town for the other three months. Lady

Chillingly and himself were both very glad to go to town, being bored at

Exmundham; and very glad to go back to Exmundham, being bored in town.

With one exception it was an exceedingly happy marriage, as marriages

go. Lady Chillingly had her way in small things; Sir Peter his way in

great. Small things happen every day; great things once in three years.

Once in three years Lady Chillingly gave way to Sir Peter; households so

managed go on regularly. The exception to their connubial happiness was,

after all, but of a negative description. Their affection was such

that they sighed for a pledge of it; fourteen years had he and Lady

Chillingly remained unvisited by the little stranger.

Now, in default of male issue, Sir Peter’s estates passed to a distant

cousin as heir-at-law; and during the last four years this heir-at-law

had evinced his belief that practically speaking he was already

heir-apparent; and (though Sir Peter was a much younger man than

himself, and as healthy as any man well can be) had made his

expectations of a speedy succession unpleasantly conspicuous. He had

refused his consent to a small exchange of lands with a neighbouring

squire, by which Sir Peter would have obtained some good arable land,

for an outlying unprofitable wood that produced nothing but fagots and

rabbits, with the blunt declaration that he, the heir-at-law, was fond

of rabbit-shooting, and that the wood would be convenient to him next

season if he came into the property by that time, which he very possibly

might. He disputed Sir Peter’s right to make his customary fall of

timber, and had even threatened him with a bill in Chancery on that

subject. In short, this heir-at-law was exactly one of those persons

to spite whom a landed proprietor would, if single, marry at the age of

eighty in the hope of a family.

Nor was it only on account of his very natural wish to frustrate the

expectations of this unamiable relation that Sir Peter Chillingly

lamented the absence of the little stranger. Although belonging to that

class of country gentlemen to whom certain political reasoners deny the

intelligence vouchsafed to other members of the community, Sir Peter was

not without a considerable degree of book-learning and a great taste

for speculative philosophy. He sighed for a legitimate inheritor to the

stores of his erudition, and, being a very benevolent man, for a more

active and useful dispenser of those benefits to the human race which

philosophers confer by striking hard against each other; just as, how

full soever of sparks a flint may be, they might lurk concealed in the

flint till doomsday, if the flint were not hit by the steel. Sir Peter,

in short, longed for a son amply endowed with the combative quality, in

which he himself was deficient, but which is the first essential to all

seekers after renown, and especially to benevolent philosophers.

Under these circumstances one may well conceive the joy that filled

the household of Exmundham and extended to all the tenantry on that

venerable estate, by whom the present possessor was much beloved and

the prospect of an heir-at-law with a special eye to the preservation

of rabbits much detested, when the medical attendant of the Chillinglys

declared that ‘her ladyship was in an interesting way;’ and to what

height that joy culminated when, in due course of time, a male baby was

safely enthroned in his cradle. To that cradle Sir Peter was summoned.

He entered the room with a lively bound and a radiant countenance: he

quitted it with a musing step and an overclouded brow.

Yet the baby was no monster. It did not come into the world with two

heads, as some babies are said to have done; it was formed as babies are

in general; was on the whole a thriving baby, a fine baby. Nevertheless,

its aspect awed the father as already it had awed the nurse. The

creature looked so unutterably solemn. It fixed its eyes upon Sir Peter

with a melancholy reproachful stare; its lips were compressed and drawn

downward as if discontentedly meditating its future destinies. The nurse

declared in a frightened whisper that it had uttered no cry on facing

the light. It had taken possession of its cradle in all the dignity of

silent sorrow. A more saddened and a more thoughtful countenance a human

being could not exhibit if he were leaving the world instead of entering

it.

“Hem!” said Sir Peter to himself on regaining the solitude of his

library; “a philosopher who contributes a new inhabitant to this vale of

tears takes upon himself very anxious responsibilities--”

At that moment the joy-bells rang out from the neighbouring church

tower, the summer sun shone into the windows, the bees hummed among the

flowers on the lawn. Sir Peter roused himself and looked forth, “After

all,” said he, cheerily, “the vale of tears is not without a smile.”

CHAPTER II.

A FAMILY council was held at Exmundham Hall to deliberate on the name

by which this remarkable infant should be admitted into the Christian

community. The junior branches of that ancient house consisted, first,

of the obnoxious heir-at-law--a Scotch branch named Chillingly Gordon.

He was the widowed father of one son, now of the age of three, and

happily unconscious of the injury inflicted on his future prospects by

the advent of the new-born, which could not be truthfully said of his

Caledonian father. Mr. Chillingly Gordon was one of those men who get on

in the world with out our being able to discover why. His parents died

in his infancy and left him nothing; but the family 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.

Chillingly Gordon. He had a square jaw and large red bushy eyebrows,

which he lowered down with great effect when he delivered judgment.

He had another advantage for acquiring grave reputation. He was a very

unpleasant man. He could be rude if you contradicted him; and as few

persons wish to provoke rudeness, so he was seldom contradicted.

Mr. Chillingly Mivers, another cadet of the house, was also

distinguished, but in a different way. He was a bachelor, now about the

age of thirty-five. He was eminent for a supreme well-bred contempt for

everybody and everything. He was the originator and chief proprietor of

a public journal called “The Londoner,” which had lately been set up on

that principle of contempt, and we need not say, was exceedingly popular

with those leading members of the community who admire nobody and

believe in nothing. Mr. Chillingly Mivers was regarded by himself and

by others as a man who might have achieved the highest success in any

branch of literature, if he had deigned to exhibit his talents therein.

But he did not so deign, and therefore he had full right to imply that,

if he had written an epic, a drama, a novel, a history, a metaphysical

treatise, Milton, Shakspeare, Cervantes, Hume, Berkeley would have been

nowhere. He held greatly to the dignity of the anonymous; and even in

the journal which he originated nobody could ever ascertain what he

wrote. But, at all events, Mr. Chillingly Mivers was what Mr. Chillingly

Gordon was not; namely, a very clever man, and by no means an unpleasant

one in general society.

The Rev. John Stalworth Chillingly was a decided adherent to the creed

of what is called “muscular Christianity,” and a very fine specimen

of it too. A tall stout man with broad shoulders, and that division of

lower limb which intervenes between the knee and the ankle powerfully

developed. He would have knocked down a deist as soon as looked at

him. It is told by the Sieur de Joinville, in his Memoir of Louis, the

sainted king, that an assembly of divines and theologians convened the

Jews of an Oriental city for the purpose of arguing with them on the

truths of Christianity, and a certain knight, who was at that time

crippled, and supporting himself on crutches, asked and obtained

permission to be present at the debate. The Jews flocked to the summons,

when a prelate, selecting a learned rabbi, mildly put to him the leading

question whether he owned the divine conception of our Lord. “Certainly

not,” replied the rabbi; whereon the pious knight, shocked by such

blasphemy, uplifted his crutch and felled the rabbi, and then flung

himself among the other misbelievers, whom he soon dispersed in

ignominious flight and in a very belaboured condition. The conduct of

the knight was reported to the sainted king, with a request that it

should be properly reprimanded; but the sainted king delivered himself

of this wise judgment:--

“If a pious knight is a very learned clerk, and can meet in fair

argument the doctrines of the misbeliever, by all means let him argue

fairly; but if a pious knight is not a learned clerk, and the argument

goes against him, then let the pious knight cut the discussion short by

the edge of his good sword.”

The Rev. John Stalworth Chillingly was of the same opinion as Saint

Louis; otherwise, he was a mild and amiable man. He encouraged cricket

and other manly sports among his rural parishioners. He was a skilful

and bold rider, but he did not hunt; a convivial man--and took his

bottle freely. But his tastes in literature were of a refined and

peaceful character, contrasting therein the tendencies some might have

expected from his muscular development of Christianity. He was a great

reader of poetry, but he disliked Scott and Byron, whom he considered

flashy and noisy; he maintained that Pope was only a versifier, and that

the greatest poet in the language was Wordsworth; he did not care much

for the ancient classics; he refused all merit to the French poets; he

knew nothing of the Italian, but he dabbled in German, and was inclined

to bore one about the “Hermann and Dorothea” of Goethe. He was married

to a homely little wife, who revered him in silence, and thought there

would be no schism in the Church if he were in his right place as

Archbishop of Canterbury; in this opinion he entirely agreed with his

wife.

Besides these three male specimens of the Chillingly race, the fairer

sex was represented, in the absence of her ladyship, who still kept her

room, by three female Chillinglys, sisters of Sir Peter, and all three

spinsters. Perhaps one reason why they had remained single was, that

externally they were so like each other that a suitor must have been

puzzled which to choose, and may have been afraid that if he did choose

one, he should be caught next day kissing another one in mistake. They

were all tall, all thin, with long throats--and beneath the throats a

fine development of bone. They had all pale hair, pale eyelids, pale

eyes, and pale complexions. They all dressed exactly alike, and their

favourite colour was a vivid green: they were so dressed on this

occasion.

As there was such similitude in their persons, so, to an ordinary

observer, they were exactly the same in character and mind. Very

well behaved, with proper notions of female decorum: very distant and

reserved in manner to strangers; very affectionate to each other and

their relations or favourites; very good to the poor, whom they looked

upon as a different order of creation, and treated with that sort of

benevolence which humane people bestow upon dumb animals. Their minds

had been nourished on the same books--what one read the others had read.

The books were mainly divided into two classes,--novels, and what they

called “good books.” They had a habit of taking a specimen of each

alternately; one day a novel, then a good book, then a novel again, and

so on. Thus if the imagination was overwarmed on Monday, on Tuesday it

was cooled down to a proper temperature; and if frost-bitten on Tuesday,

it took a tepid bath on Wednesday. The novels they chose were indeed

rarely of a nature to raise the intellectual thermometer into blood

heat: the heroes and heroines were models of correct conduct. Mr.

James’s novels were then in vogue, and they united in saying that those

“were novels a father might allow his daughters to read.” But though an

ordinary observer might have failed to recognize any distinction between

these three ladies, and, finding them habitually dressed in green, would

have said they were as much alike as one pea is to another, they had

their idiosyncratic differences, when duly examined. Miss Margaret, the

eldest, was the commanding one of the three; it was she who regulated

their household (they all lived together), kept the joint purse, and

decided every doubtful point that arose: whether they should or should

not ask Mrs. So-and-so to tea; whether Mary should or should not be

discharged; whether or not they should go to Broadstairs or to Sandgate

for the month of October. In fact, Miss Margaret was the WILL of the

body corporate.

Miss Sibyl was of milder nature and more melancholy temperament; she had

a poetic turn of mind, and occasionally wrote verses. Some of these

had been printed on satin paper, and sold for objects of beneficence

at charity bazaars. The county newspapers said that the verses “were

characterized by all the elegance of a cultured and feminine mind.” The

other two sisters agreed that Sibyl was the genius of the household,

but, like all geniuses, not sufficiently practical for the world.

Miss Sarah Chillingly, the youngest of the three, and now just in her

forty-fourth year, was looked upon by the others as “a dear thing,

inclined to be naughty, but such a darling that nobody could have the

heart to scold her.” Miss Margaret said “she was a giddy creature.” Miss

Sibyl wrote a poem on her, entitled, “Warning to a young Lady against

the Pleasures of the World.” They all called her Sally; the other

two sisters had no diminutive synonyms. Sally is a name indicative of

fastness. But this Sally would not have been thought fast in another

household, and she was now little likely to sally out of the one she

belonged to. These sisters, who were all many years older than Sir

Peter, lived in a handsome, old-fashioned, red-brick house, with a large

garden at the back, in the principal street of the capital of their

native county. They had each L10,000 for portion; and if he could have

married all three, the heir-at-law would have married them, and settled

the aggregate L30,000 on himself. But we have not yet come to recognize

Mormonism as legal, though if our social progress continues to slide in

the same grooves as at present, Heaven only knows what triumphs over

the prejudices of our ancestors may not be achieved by the wisdom of our

descendants!

CHAPTER III.

SIR PETER stood on his hearthstone, surveyed the guests seated in

semicircle, and said: “Friends,--in Parliament, before anything

affecting the fate of a Bill is discussed, it is, I believe, necessary

to introduce the Bill.” He paused a moment, rang the bell, and said to

the servant who entered, “Tell Nurse to bring in the Baby.”

Mr. CHILLINGLY GORDON.--“I don’t see the necessity for that, Sir Peter.

We may take the existence of the Baby for granted.”

Mr. MIVERS.--“It is an advantage to the reputation of Sir Peter’s work

to preserve the incognito. _Omne ignotum pro magnifico_.”

THE REV. JOHN STALWORTH CHILLINGLY.--“I don’t approve the cynical

levity of such remarks. Of course we must all be anxious to see, in the

earliest stage of being, the future representative of our name and race.

Who would not wish to contemplate the source, however small, of the

Tigris or the Nile!--”

MISS SALLY (tittering).--“He! he!”

MISS MARGARET.--“For shame, you giddy thing!”

The Baby enters in the nurse’s arms. All rise and gather round the Baby

with one exception,--Mr. Gordon, who has ceased to be heir-at-law.

The Baby returned the gaze of its relations with the most contemptuous

indifference. Miss Sibyl was the first to pronounce an opinion on the

Baby’s attributes. Said she, in a solemn whisper, “What a heavenly

mournful expression! it seems so grieved to have left the angels!”

THE REV. JOHN.--“That is prettily said, Cousin Sibyl; but the infant

must pluck up its courage and fight its way among mortals with a good

heart, if it wants to get back to the angels again. And I think it will;

a fine child.” He took it from the nurse, and moving it deliberately up

and down, as if to weigh it, said cheerfully, “Monstrous heavy! by the

time it is twenty it will be a match for a prize-fighter of fifteen

stone!”

Therewith he strode to Gordon, who as if to show that he now considered

himself wholly apart from all interest in the affairs of a family who

had so ill-treated him in the birth of that Baby, had taken up the

“Times” newspaper and concealed his countenance beneath the ample sheet.

The Parson abruptly snatched away the “Times” with one hand, and,

with the other substituting to the indignant eyes of the _ci-devant_

heir-at-law the spectacle of the Baby, said, “Kiss it.”

“Kiss it!” echoed Chillingly Gordon, pushing back his chair--“kiss

it! pooh, sir, stand off! I never kissed my own baby: I shall not kiss

another man’s. Take the thing away, sir: it is ugly; it has black eyes.”

Sir Peter, who was near-sighted, put on his spectacles and examined

the face of the new-born. “True,” said he, “it has black eyes,--very

extraordinary: portentous: the first Chillingly that ever had black

eyes.”

“Its mamma has black eyes,” said Miss Margaret: “it takes after its

mamma; it has not the fair beauty of the Chillinglys, but it is not

ugly.”

“Sweet infant!” sighed Sibyl; “and so good; does not cry.”

“It has neither cried nor crowed since it was born,” said the nurse;

“bless its little heart.”

She took the Baby from the Parson’s arms, and smoothed back the frill of

its cap, which had got ruffled.

“You may go now, Nurse,” said Sir Peter.

CHAPTER IV.

“I AGREE with Mr. Shandy,” said Sir Peter, resuming his stand on the

hearthstone, “that among the responsibilities of a parent the choice of

the name which his child is to bear for life is one of the gravest. And

this is especially so with those who belong to the order of baronets.

In the case of a peer his Christian name, fused into his titular

designation, disappears. In the case of a Mister, if his baptismal

be cacophonous or provocative of ridicule, he need not ostentatiously

parade it: he may drop it altogether on his visiting cards, and may be

imprinted as Mr. Jones instead of Mr. Ebenezer Jones. In his signature,

save where the forms of the law demand Ebenezer in full, he may only

use an initial and be your obedient servant E. Jones, leaving it to be

conjectured that E. stands for Edward or Ernest,--names inoffensive, and

not suggestive of a Dissenting Chapel, like Ebenezer. If a man called

Edward or Ernest be detected in some youthful indiscretion, there is

no indelible stain on his moral character: but if an Ebenezer be so

detected he is set down as a hypocrite; it produces that shock on the

public mind which is felt when a professed saint is proved to be a

bit of a sinner. But a baronet never can escape from his baptismal: it

cannot lie _perdu_; it cannot shrink into an initial, it stands forth

glaringly in the light of day; christen him Ebenezer, and he is Sir

Ebenezer in full, with all its perilous consequences if he ever succumb

to those temptations to which even baronets are exposed. But, my

friends, it is not only the effect that the sound of a name has upon

others which is to be thoughtfully considered: the effect that his name

produces on the man himself is perhaps still more important. Some names

stimulate and encourage the owner; others deject and paralyze him: I

am a melancholy instance of that truth. Peter has been for many

generations, as you are aware, the baptismal to which the eldest-born

of our family has been devoted. On the altar of that name I have been

sacrificed. Never has there been a Sir Peter Chillingly who has, in any

way, distinguished himself above his fellows. That name has been a dead

weight on my intellectual energies. In the catalogue of illustrious

Englishmen there is, I think, no immortal Sir Peter, except Sir Peter

Teazle, and he only exists on the comic stage.”

MISS SIBYL.--“Sir Peter Lely?”

SIR PETER CHILLINGLY.--“That painter was not an Englishman. He was born

in Westphalia, famous for hams. I confine my remarks to the children of

our native land. I am aware that in foreign countries the name is not an

extinguisher to the genius of its owner. But why? In other countries its

sound is modified. Pierre Corneille was a great man; but I put it to

you whether, had he been an Englishman, he could have been the father of

European tragedy as Peter Crow?”

MISS SIBYL.--“Impossible!”

MISS SALLY.--“He! he!”

MISS MARGARET.--“There is nothing to laugh at, you giddy child!”

SIR PETER.--“My son shall not be petrified into Peter.”

MR. CHILLINGLY GORDON.--“If a man is such a fool--and I don’t say your

son will not be a fool, Cousin Peter--as to be influenced by the sound

of his own name, and you want the booby to turn the world topsy-turvy,

you had better call him Julius Caesar or Hannibal or Attila or

Charlemagne.”

SIR PETER, (who excels mankind in imperturbability of temper).--“On the

contrary, if you inflict upon a man the burden of one of those names,

the glory of which he cannot reasonably expect to eclipse or even to

equal, you crush him beneath the weight. If a poet were called John

Milton or William Shakspeare, he could not dare to publish even a

sonnet. No: the choice of a name lies between the two extremes of

ludicrous insignificance and oppressive renown. For this reason I have

ordered the family pedigree to be suspended on yonder wall. Let us

examine it with care, and see whether, among the Chillinglys themselves

or their alliances, we can discover a name that can be borne with

becoming dignity by the destined head of our house--a name neither too

light nor too heavy.”

Sir Peter here led the way to the family tree--a goodly roll of

parchment, with the arms of the family emblazoned at the top. Those arms

were simple, as ancient heraldic coats are,--three fishes _argent_ on

a field _azure_; the crest a mermaid’s head. All flocked to inspect the

pedigree except Mr. Gordon, who resumed the “Times” newspaper.

“I never could quite make out what kind of fishes these are,” said

the Rev. John Stalworth. “They are certainly not pike which formed the

emblematic blazon of the Hotofts, and are still grim enough to frighten

future Shakspeares on the scutcheon of the Warwickshire Lucys.”

“I believe they are tenches,” said Mr. Mivers. “The tench is a fish that

knows how to keep itself safe by a philosophical taste for an obscure

existence in deep holes and slush.”

SIR PETER.--“No, Mivers; the fishes are dace, a fish that, once

introduced into any pond, never can be got out again. You may drag

the water; you may let off the water; you may say, ‘Those dace are

extirpated,’--vain thought!--the dace reappear as before; and in this

respect the arms are really emblematic of the family. All the disorders

and revolutions that have occurred in England since the Heptarchy have

left the Chillinglys the same race in the same place. Somehow or other

the Norman Conquest did not despoil them; they held fiefs under Eudo

Dapifer as peacefully as they had held them under King Harold; they took

no part in the Crusades, nor the Wars of the Roses, nor the Civil Wars

between Charles the First and the Parliament. As the dace sticks to the

water and the water sticks by the dace, so the Chillinglys stuck to the

land and the land stuck by the Chillinglys. Perhaps I am wrong to wish

that the new Chillingly may be a little less like a dace.”

“Oh!” cried Miss Margaret, who, mounted on a chair, had been inspecting

the pedigree through an eye-glass, “I don’t see a fine Christian name

from the beginning, except Oliver.”

SIR PETER.--“That Chillingly was born in Oliver Cromwell’s Protectorate,

and named Oliver in compliment to him, as his father, born in the reign

of James I., was christened James. The three fishes always swam with

the stream. Oliver!--Oliver not a bad name, but significant of radical

doctrines.”

Mr. MIVERS.--“I don’t think so. Oliver Cromwell made short work of

radicals and their doctrines; but perhaps we can find a name less awful

and revolutionary.”

“I have it! I have it!” cried the Parson. “Here is a descent from Sir

Kenelm Digby and Venetia Stanley. Sir Kenelm Digby! No finer specimen of

muscular Christianity. He fought as well as he wrote; eccentric, it is

true, but always a gentleman. Call the boy Kenelm!”

“A sweet name,” said Miss Sibyl: “it breathes of romance.”

“Sir Kenelm Chillingly! It sounds well,--imposing!” said Miss Margaret.

“And,” remarked Mr. Mivers, “it has this advantage--that while it has

sufficient association with honourable distinction to affect the mind of

the namesake and rouse his emulation, it is not that of so stupendous

a personage as to defy rivalry. Sir Kenelm Digby was certainly an

accomplished and gallant gentleman; but what with his silly superstition

about sympathetic powders, etc., any man nowadays might be clever in

comparison without being a prodigy. Yes, let us decide on Kenelm.”

Sir Peter meditated. “Certainly,” said he, after a pause, “certainly

the name of Kenelm carries with it very crotchety associations; and I am

afraid that Sir Kenelm Digby did not make a prudent choice in marriage.

The fair Venetia was no better than she should be; and I should wish

my heir not to be led away by beauty but wed a woman of respectable

character and decorous conduct.”

Miss MARGARET.--“A British matron, of course!”

THREE SISTERS (in chorus).--“Of course! of course!”

“But,” resumed Sir Peter, “I am crotchety myself, and crotchets are

innocent things enough; and as for marriage the Baby cannot marry

to-morrow, so that we have ample time to consider that matter. Kenelm

Digby was a man any family might be proud of; and, as you say, sister

Margaret, Kenelm Chillingly does not sound amiss: Kenelm Chillingly it

shall be!”

The Baby was accordingly christened Kenelm, after which ceremony its

face grew longer than before.

CHAPTER V.

BEFORE his relations dispersed, Sir Peter summoned Mr. Gordon into his

library.

“Cousin,” said he, kindly, “I do not blame you for the want of family

affection, or even of humane interest, which you exhibit towards the

New-born.”

“Blame me, Cousin Peter! I should think not. I exhibit as much

family affection and humane interest as could be expected from

me,--circumstances considered.”

“I own,” said Sir Peter, with all his wonted mildness, “that after

remaining childless for fourteen years of wedded life, the advent of

this little stranger must have occasioned you a disagreeable surprise.

But, after all, as I am many years younger than you, and in the course

of nature shall outlive you, the loss is less to yourself than to your

son, and upon that I wish to say a few words. You know too well the

conditions on which I hold my estate not to be aware that I have

not legally the power to saddle it with any bequest to your boy. The

New-born succeeds to the fee-simple as last in tail. But I intend,

from this moment, to lay by something every year for your son out of my

income; and, fond as I am of London for a part of the year, I shall now

give up my town-house. If I live to the years the Psalmist allots to

man, I shall thus accumulate something handsome for your son, which may

be taken in the way of compensation.”

Mr. Gordon was by no means softened by this generous speech. However,

he answered more politely than was his wont, “My son will be very much

obliged to you, should he ever need your intended bequest.” Pausing a

moment, he added with a cheerful smile, “A large percentage of infants

die before attaining the age of twenty-one.”

“Nay, but I am told your son is an uncommonly fine healthy child.”

“My son, Cousin Peter! I was not thinking of my son, but of yours. Yours

has a big head. I should not wonder if he had water in it. I don’t wish

to alarm you, but he may go off any day, and in that case it is not

likely that Lady Chillingly will condescend to replace him. So you will

excuse me if I still keep a watchful eye on my rights; and, however

painful to my feelings, I must still dispute your right to cut a stick

of the field timber.”

“That is nonsense, Gordon. I am tenant for life without impeachment of

waste, and can cut down all timber not ornamental.”

“I advise you not, Cousin Peter. I have told you before that I shall try

the question at law, should you provoke it, amicably, of course. Rights

are rights; and if I am driven to maintain mine, I trust that you are of

a mind too liberal to allow your family affection for me and mine to be

influenced by a decree of the Court of Chancery. But my fly is waiting.

I must not miss the train.”

“Well, good-by, Gordon. Shake hands.”

“Shake hands!--of course, of course. By the by, as I came through the

lodge, it seemed to me sadly out of repair. I believe you are liable for

dilapidations. Good-by.”

“The man is a hog in armour,” soliloquized Sir Peter, when his cousin

was gone; “and if it be hard to drive a common pig in the way he don’t

choose to go, a hog in armour is indeed undrivable. But his boy ought

not to suffer for his father’s hoggishness; and I shall begin at once to

see what I can lay by for him. After all, it is hard upon Gordon. Poor

Gordon; poor fellow! poor fellow! Still I hope he will not go to law

with me. I hate law. And a worm will turn, especially a worm that is put

into Chancery.”

CHAPTER VI.

DESPITE the sinister semi-predictions of the _ci-devant_ heir-at-law,

the youthful Chillingly passed with safety, and indeed with dignity,

through the infant stages of existence. He took his measles and

whooping-cough with philosophical equanimity. He gradually acquired

the use of speech, but he did not too lavishly exercise that special

attribute of humanity. During the earlier years of childhood he spoke

as little as if he had been prematurely trained in the school of

Pythagoras. But he evidently spoke the less in order to reflect the

more. He observed closely and pondered deeply over what he observed. At

the age of eight he began to converse more freely, and it was in that

year that he startled his mother with the question, “Mamma, are you not

sometimes overpowered by the sense of your own identity?”

Lady Chillingly,--I was about to say rushed, but Lady Chillingly never

rushed,--Lady Chillingly glided less sedately than her wont to Sir

Peter, and repeating her son’s question, said, “The boy is growing

troublesome, too wise for any woman: he must go to school.”

Sir Peter was of the same opinion. But where on earth did the child get

hold of so long a word as “identity,” and how did so extraordinary and

puzzling a metaphysical question come into his head? Sir Peter summoned

Kenelm, and ascertained that the boy, having free access to the library,

had fastened upon Locke on the Human Understanding, and was prepared to

dispute with that philosopher upon the doctrine of innate ideas. Quoth

Kenelm, gravely, “A want is an idea; and if, as soon as I was born, I

felt the want of food and knew at once where to turn for it, without

being taught, surely I came into the world with an ‘innate idea.’”

Sir Peter, though he dabbled in metaphysics, was posed, and scratched

his head without getting out a proper answer as to the distinction

between ideas and instincts. “My child,” he said at last, “you don’t

know what you are talking about: go and take a good gallop on your black

pony; and I forbid you to read any books that are not given to you by

myself or your mamma. Stick to ‘Puss in Boots.’”

CHAPTER VII.

SIR PETER ordered his carriage and drove to the house of the stout

parson. That doughty ecclesiastic held a family living a few miles

distant from the Hall, and was the only one of the cousins with whom Sir

Peter habitually communed on his domestic affairs.

He found the Parson in his study, which exhibited tastes other

than clerical. Over the chimney-piece were ranged fencing-foils,

boxing-gloves, and staffs for the athletic exercise of single-stick;

cricket-bats and fishing-rods filled up the angles. There were

sundry prints on the walls: one of Mr. Wordsworth, flanked by two of

distinguished race-horses; one of a Leicestershire short-horn, with

which the Parson, who farmed his own glebe and bred cattle in its rich

pastures, had won a prize at the county show; and on either side of that

animal were the portraits of Hooker and Jeremy Taylor. There were dwarf

book-cases containing miscellaneous works very handsomely bound; at

the open window, a stand of flower-pots, the flowers in full bloom. The

Parson’s flowers were famous.

The appearance of the whole room was that of a man who is tidy and neat

in his habits.

“Cousin,” said Sir Peter, “I have come to consult you.” And therewith he

related the marvellous precocity of Kenelm Chillingly. “You see the name

begins to work on him rather too much. He must go to school; and now

what school shall it be? Private or public?”

THE REV. JOHN STALWORTH.--“There is a great deal to be said for or

against either. At a public school the chances are that Kenelm will

no longer be overpowered by a sense of his own identity; he will more

probably lose identity altogether. The worst of a public school is that

a sort of common character is substituted for individual character.

The master, of course, can’t attend to the separate development of each

boy’s idiosyncrasy. All minds are thrown into one great mould, and come

out of it more or less in the same form. An Etonian may be clever or

stupid, but, as either, he remains emphatically Etonian. A public school

ripens talent, but its tendency is to stifle genius. Then, too, a public

school for an only son, heir to a good estate, which will be entirely at

his own disposal, is apt to encourage reckless and extravagant habits;

and your estate requires careful management, and leaves no margin for an

heir’s notes-of-hand and post-obits. On the whole, I am against a public

school for Kenelm.”

“Well then, we will decide on a private one.”

“Hold!” said the Parson: “a private school has its drawbacks. You can

seldom produce large fishes in small ponds. In private schools the

competition is narrowed, the energies stinted. The schoolmaster’s wife

interferes, and generally coddles the boys. There is not manliness

enough in those academies; no fagging, and very little fighting. A

clever boy turns out a prig; a boy of feebler intellect turns out a

well-behaved young lady in trousers. Nothing muscular in the system.

Decidedly the namesake and descendant of Kenelm Digby should not go to a

private seminary.”

“So far as I gather from your reasoning,” said Sir Peter, with

characteristic placidity, “Kenelm Chillingly is not to go to school at

all.”

“It does look like it,” said the Parson, candidly; “but, on

consideration, there is a medium. There are schools which unite the best

qualities of public and private schools, large enough to stimulate and

develop energies mental and physical, yet not so framed as to melt all

character in one crucible. For instance, there is a school which has

at this moment one of the first scholars in Europe for head-master,--a

school which has turned out some of the most remarkable men of the

rising generation. The master sees at a glance if a boy be clever, and

takes pains with him accordingly. He is not a mere teacher of hexameters

and sapphics. His learning embraces all literature, ancient and modern.

He is a good writer and a fine critic; admires Wordsworth. He winks at

fighting: his boys know how to use their fists; and they are not in the

habit of signing post-obits before they are fifteen. Merton School is

the place for Kenelm.”

“Thank you,” said Sir Peter. “It is a great comfort in life to find

somebody who can decide for one. I am an irresolute man myself, and in

ordinary matters willingly let Lady Chillingly govern me.”

“I should like to see a wife govern _me_,” said the stout Parson.

“But you are not married to Lady Chillingly. And now let us go into the

garden and look at your dahlias.”

CHAPTER VIII.

THE youthful confuter of Locke was despatched to Merton School, and

ranked, according to his merits, as lag of the penultimate form. When he

came home for the Christmas holidays he was more saturnine than ever;

in fact, his countenance bore the impression of some absorbing grief.

He said, however, that he liked school very well, and eluded all other

questions. But early the next morning he mounted his black pony and

rode to the Parson’s rectory. The reverend gentleman was in his farmyard

examining his bullocks when Kenelm accosted him thus briefly,--

“Sir, I am disgraced, and I shall die of it if you cannot help to set me

right in my own eyes.”

“My dear boy, don’t talk in that way. Come into my study.”

As soon as they entered that room, and the Parson had carefully closed

the door, he took the boy’s arm, turned him round to the light, and saw

at once that there was something very grave on his mind. Chucking him

under the chin, the Parson said cheerily, “Hold up your head, Kenelm. I

am sure you have done nothing unworthy of a gentleman.”

“I don’t know that. I fought a boy very little bigger than myself, and

I have been licked. I did not give in, though; but the other boys picked

me up, for I could not stand any longer; and the fellow is a great

bully; and his name is Butt; and he’s the son of a lawyer; and he got my

head into chancery; and I have challenged him to fight again next

half; and unless you can help me to lick him, I shall never be good for

anything in the world,--never. It will break my heart.”

“I am very glad to hear you have had the pluck to challenge him. Just

let me see how you double your fist. Well, that’s not amiss. Now, put

yourself into a fighting attitude, and hit out at me,--hard! harder!

Pooh! that will never do. You should make your blows as straight as

an arrow. And that’s not the way to stand. Stop,--so: well on your

haunches; weight on the left leg; good! Now, put on these gloves, and

I’ll give you a lesson in boxing.”

Five minutes afterwards Mrs. John Chillingly, entering the room to

summon her husband to breakfast, stood astounded to see him with his

coat off, and parrying the blows of Kenelm, who flew at him like a young

tiger. The good pastor at that moment might certainly have appeared a

fine type of muscular Christianity, but not of that kind of Christianity

out of which one makes Archbishops of Canterbury.

“Good gracious me!” faltered Mrs. John Chillingly; and then, wife-like,

flying to the protection of her husband, she seized Kenelm by the

shoulders, and gave him a good shaking. The Parson, who was sadly out

of breath, was not displeased at the interruption, but took that

opportunity to put on his coat, and said, “We’ll begin again to-morrow.

Now, come to breakfast.” But during breakfast Kenelm’s face still

betrayed dejection, and he talked little and ate less.

As soon as the meal was over, he drew the Parson into the garden and

said, “I have been thinking, sir, that perhaps it is not fair to Butt

that I should be taking these lessons; and if it is not fair, I’d rather

not--”

“Give me your hand, my boy!” cried the Parson, transported. “The name

of Kenelm is not thrown away upon you. The natural desire of man in

his attribute of fighting animal (an attribute in which, I believe, he

excels all other animated beings, except a quail and a gamecock) is to

beat his adversary. But the natural desire of that culmination of man

which we call gentleman is to beat his adversary fairly. A gentleman

would rather be beaten fairly than beat unfairly. Is not that your

thought?”

“Yes,” replied Kenelm, firmly; and then, beginning to philosophize, he

added, “And it stands to reason; because if I beat a fellow unfairly, I

don’t really beat him at all.”

“Excellent! But suppose that you and another boy go into examination

upon Caesar’s Commentaries or the multiplication table, and the other

boy is cleverer than you, but you have taken the trouble to learn the

subject and he has not: should you say you beat him unfairly?”

Kenelm meditated a moment, and then said decidedly, “No.”

“That which applies to the use of your brains applies equally to the use

of your fists. Do you comprehend me?”

“Yes, sir; I do now.”

“In the time of your namesake, Sir Kenelm Digby, gentlemen wore swords,

and they learned how to use them, because, in case of quarrel, they had

to fight with them. Nobody, at least in England, fights with swords

now. It is a democratic age, and if you fight at all, you are reduced to

fists; and if Kenelm Digby learned to fence, so Kenelm Chillingly must

learn to box; and if a gentleman thrashes a drayman twice his size, who

has not learned to box, it is not unfair; it is but an exemplification

of the truth that knowledge is power. Come and take another lesson on

boxing to-morrow.”

Kenelm remounted his pony and returned home. He found his father

sauntering in the garden with a book in his hand. “Papa,” said Kenelm,

“how does one gentleman write to another with whom he has a quarrel,

and he don’t want to make it up, but he has something to say about the

quarrel which it is fair the other gentleman should know?”

“I don’t understand what you mean.”

“Well, just before I went to school I remember hearing you say that you

had a quarrel with Lord Hautfort, and that he was an ass, and you would

write and tell him so. When you wrote did you say, ‘You are an ass’? Is

that the way one gentleman writes to another?”

“Upon my honour, Kenelm, you ask very odd questions. But you cannot

learn too early this fact, that irony is to the high-bred what

Billingsgate is to the vulgar; and when one gentleman thinks another

gentleman an ass, he does not say it point-blank: he implies it in the

politest terms he can invent. Lord Hautfort denies my right of free

warren over a trout-stream that runs through his lands. I don’t care a

rush about the trout-stream, but there is no doubt of my right to fish

in it. He was an ass to raise the question; for, if he had not, I

should not have exercised the right. As he did raise the question, I was

obliged to catch his trout.”

“And you wrote a letter to him?”

“Yes.”

“How did you write, Papa? What did you say?”

“Something like this. ‘Sir Peter Chillingly presents his compliments

to Lord Hautfort, and thinks it fair to his lordship to say that he has

taken the best legal advice with regard to his rights of free warren;

and trusts to be forgiven if he presumes to suggest that Lord Hautfort

might do well to consult his own lawyer before he decides on disputing

them.’”

“Thank you, Papa. I see.”

That evening Kenelm wrote the following letter:--

Mr. Chillingly presents his compliments to Mr. Butt, and thinks it fair

to Mr. Butt to say that he is taking lessons in boxing; and trusts to be

forgiven if he presumes to suggest that Mr. Butt might do well to take

lessons himself before fighting with Mr. Chillingly next half.

“Papa,” said Kenelm the next morning, “I want to write to a schoolfellow

whose name is Butt; he is the son of a lawyer who is called a serjeant.

I don’t know where to direct to him.”

“That is easily ascertained,” said Sir Peter. “Serjeant Butt is an

eminent man, and his address will be in the Court Guide.”

The address was found,--Bloomsbury Square; and Kenelm directed his

letter accordingly. In due course he received this answer,--

You are an insolent little fool, and I’ll thrash you within an inch of

your life.

ROBERT BUTT.

After the receipt of that polite epistle, Kenelm Chillingly’s scruples

vanished, and he took daily lessons in muscular Christianity.

Kenelm returned to school with a brow cleared from care, and three days

after his return he wrote to the Reverend John,--

DEAR SIR,--I have licked Butt. Knowledge is power.

Your affectionate KENELM.

P. S.--Now that I have licked Butt, I have made it up with him.

From that time Kenelm prospered. Eulogistic letters from the illustrious

head-master showered in upon Sir Peter. At the age of sixteen Kenelm

Chillingly was the head of the school, and, quitting it finally,

brought home the following letter from his Orbilius to Sir Peter, marked

“confidential”:--

DEAR SIR PETER CHILLINGLY,--I have never felt more anxious for the

future career of any of my pupils than I do for that of your son. He is

so clever that, with ease to himself, he may become a great man. He is

so peculiar that it is quite as likely that he may only make himself

known to the world as a great oddity. That distinguished teacher Dr.

Arnold said that the difference between one boy and another was not so

much talent as energy. Your son has talent, has energy: yet he wants

something for success in life; he wants the faculty of amalgamation. He

is of a melancholic and therefore unsocial temperament. He will not act

in concert with others. He is lovable enough: the other boys like him,

especially the smaller ones, with whom he is a sort of hero; but he

has not one intimate friend. So far as school learning is concerned,

he might go to college at once, and with the certainty of distinction

provided he chose to exert himself. But if I may venture to offer an

advice, I should say employ the next two years in letting him see

a little more of real life and acquire a due sense of its practical

objects. Send him to a private tutor who is not a pedant, but a man

of letters or a man of the world, and if in the metropolis so much the

better. In a word, my young friend is unlike other people; and, with

qualities that might do anything in life, I fear, unless you can get

him to be like other people, that he will do nothing. Excuse the freedom

with which I write, and ascribe it to the singular interest with which

your son has inspired me. I have the honour to be, dear Sir Peter,

Yours truly, WILLIAM HORTON.

Upon the strength of this letter Sir Peter did not indeed summon another

family council; for he did not consider that his three maiden sisters

could offer any practical advice on the matter. And as to Mr. Gordon,

that gentleman having gone to law on the great timber question, and

having been signally beaten thereon, had informed Sir Peter that he

disowned him as a cousin and despised him as a man; not exactly in those

words,--more covertly, and therefore more stingingly. But Sir Peter

invited Mr. Mivers for a week’s shooting, and requested the Reverend

John to meet him.

Mr. Mivers arrived. The sixteen years that had elapsed since he was

first introduced to the reader had made no perceptible change in his

appearance. It was one of his maxims that in youth a man of the world

should appear older than he is; and in middle age, and thence to his

dying day, younger. And he announced one secret for attaining that art

in these words: “Begin your wig early, thus you never become gray.”

Unlike most philosophers, Mivers made his practice conform to his

precepts; and while in the prime of youth inaugurated a wig in a

fashion that defied the flight of time, not curly and hyacinthine, but

straight-haired and unassuming. He looked five-and-thirty from the day

he put on that wig at the age of twenty-five. He looked five-and-thirty

now at the age of fifty-one.

“I mean,” said he, “to remain thirty-five all my life. No better age to

stick at. People may choose to say I am more, but I shall not own it. No

one is bound to criminate himself.”

Mr. Mivers had some other aphorisms on this important subject. One

was, “Refuse to be ill. Never tell people you are ill; never own it to

yourself. Illness is one of those things which a man should resist on

principle at the onset. It should never be allowed to get in the thin

end of the wedge. But take care of your constitution, and, having

ascertained the best habits for it, keep to them like clockwork.” Mr.

Mivers would not have missed his constitutional walk in the Park before

breakfast if, by going in a cab to St. Giles’s, he could have saved the

city of London from conflagration.

Another aphorism of his was, “If you want to keep young, live in a

metropolis; never stay above a few weeks at a time in the country. Take

two men of similar constitution at the age of twenty-five; let one live

in London and enjoy a regular sort of club life; send the other to some

rural district, preposterously called ‘salubrious.’ Look at these men

when they have both reached the age of forty-five. The London man has

preserved his figure: the rural man has a paunch. The London man has

an interesting delicacy of complexion: the face of the rural man is

coarse-grained and perhaps jowly.”

A third axiom was, “Don’t be a family man; nothing ages one like

matrimonial felicity and paternal ties. Never multiply cares, and pack

up your life in the briefest compass you can. Why add to your carpet-bag

of troubles the contents of a lady’s imperials and bonnet-boxes, and the

travelling _fourgon_ required by the nursery? Shun ambition: it is so

gouty. It takes a great deal out of a man’s life, and gives him nothing

worth having till he has ceased to enjoy it.” Another of his aphorisms

was this, “A fresh mind keeps the body fresh. Take in the ideas of the

day, drain off those of yesterday. As to the morrow, time enough to

consider it when it becomes to-day.”

Preserving himself by attention to these rules, Mr. Mivers appeared at

Exmundham _totus, teres_, but not _rotundus_,--a man of middle height,

slender, upright, with well-cut, small, slight features, thin lips,

enclosing an excellent set of teeth, even, white, and not indebted

to the dentist. For the sake of those teeth he shunned acid wines,

especially hock in all its varieties, culinary sweets, and hot drinks.

He drank even his tea cold.

“There are,” he said, “two things in life that a sage must preserve at

every sacrifice, the coats of his stomach and the enamel of his teeth.

Some evils admit of consolations: there are no comforters for dyspepsia

and toothache.” A man of letters, but a man of the world, he had so

cultivated his mind as both that he was feared as the one and liked as

the other. As a man of letters he despised the world; as a man of the

world he despised letters. As the representative of both he revered

himself.

CHAPTER IX.

ON the evening of the third day from the arrival of Mr. Mivers, he, the

Parson, and Sir Peter were seated in the host’s parlour, the Parson in

an armchair by the ingle, smoking a short cutty-pipe; Mivers at length

on the couch, slowly inhaling the perfumes of one of his own choice

_trabucos_. Sir Peter never smoked. There were spirits and hot water and

lemons on the table. The Parson was famed for skill in the composition

of toddy. From time to time the Parson sipped his glass, and Sir Peter

less frequently did the same. It is needless to say that Mr. Mivers

eschewed toddy; but beside him, on a chair, was a tumbler and a large

carafe of iced water.

SIR PETER.--“Cousin Mivers, you have now had time to study Kenelm,

and to compare his character with that assigned to him in the Doctor’s

letter.”

MIVERS (languidly).--“Ay.”

SIR PETER.--“I ask you, as a man of the world, what you think I had

best do with the boy. Shall I send him to such a tutor as the Doctor

suggests? Cousin John is not of the same mind as the Doctor, and thinks

that Kenelm’s oddities are fine things in their way, and should not be

prematurely ground out of him by contact with worldly tutors and London

pavements.”

“Ay,” repeated Mr. Mivers more languidly than before. After a pause he

added, “Parson John, let us hear you.”

The Parson laid aside his cutty-pipe and emptied his fourth tumbler of

toddy; then, throwing back his head in the dreamy fashion of the great

Coleridge when he indulged in a monologue, he thus began, speaking

somewhat through his nose,--

“At the morning of life--”

Here Mivers shrugged his shoulders, turned round on his couch, and

closed his eyes with the sigh of a man resigning himself to a homily.

“At the morning of life, when the dews--”

“I knew the dews were coming,” said Mivers. “Dry them, if you please;

nothing so unwholesome. We anticipate what you mean to say, which is

plainly this, When a fellow is sixteen he is very fresh: so he is; pass

on; what then?”

“If you mean to interrupt me with your habitual cynicism,” said the

Parson, “why did you ask to hear me?”

“That was a mistake I grant; but who on earth could conceive that you

were going to commence in that florid style? Morning of life indeed!

bosh!”

“Cousin Mivers,” said Sir Peter, “you are not reviewing John’s style in

‘The Londoner;’ and I will beg you to remember that my son’s morning of

life is a serious thing to his father, and not to be nipped in its bud

by a cousin. Proceed, John!”

Quoth the Parson, good-humouredly, “I will adapt my style to the taste

of my critic. When a fellow is at the age of sixteen, and very fresh

to life, the question is whether he should begin thus prematurely to

exchange the ideas that belong to youth for the ideas that properly

belong to middle age,--whether he should begin to acquire that knowledge

of the world which middle-aged men have acquired and can teach. I think

not. I would rather have him yet a while in the company of the poets;

in the indulgence of glorious hopes and beautiful dreams, forming to

himself some type of the Heroic, which he will keep before his eyes as

a standard when he goes into the world as man. There are two schools of

thought for the formation of character,--the Real and the Ideal. I would

form the character in the Ideal school, in order to make it bolder and

grander and lovelier when it takes its place in that every-day life

which is called Real. And therefore I am not for placing the descendant

of Sir Kenelm Digby, in the interval between school and college, with a

man of the world, probably as cynical as Cousin Mivers and living in the

stony thoroughfares of London.”

MR. MIVERS (rousing himself).--“Before we plunge into that Serbonian

bog--the controversy between the Realistic and the Idealistic

academicians--I think the first thing to decide is what you want Kenelm

to be hereafter. When I order a pair of shoes, I decide beforehand what

kind of shoes they are to be,--court pumps or strong walking shoes;

and I don’t ask the shoemaker to give me a preliminary lecture upon the

different purposes of locomotion to which leather can be applied. If,

Sir Peter, you want Kenelm to scribble lackadaisical poems, listen to

Parson John; if you want to fill his head with pastoral rubbish about

innocent love, which may end in marrying the miller’s daughter, listen

to Parson John; if you want him to enter life a soft-headed greenhorn,

who will sign any bill carrying 50 per cent to which a young scamp asks

him to be security, listen to Parson John; in fine, if you wish a clever

lad to become either a pigeon or a ring-dove, a credulous booby or a

sentimental milksop, Parson John is the best adviser you can have.”

“But I don’t want my son to ripen into either of those imbecile

developments of species.”

“Then don’t listen to Parson John; and there’s an end of the

discussion.”

“No, there is not. I have not heard your advice what to do if John’s

advice is not to be taken.”

Mr. Mivers hesitated. He seemed puzzled.

“The fact is,” said the Parson, “that Mivers got up ‘The Londoner’

upon a principle that regulates his own mind,--find fault with the way

everything is done, but never commit yourself by saying how anything can

be done better.”

“That is true,” said Mivers, candidly. “The destructive order of mind is

seldom allied to the constructive. I and ‘The Londoner’ are destructive

by nature and by policy. We can reduce a building into rubbish, but we

don’t profess to turn rubbish into a building. We are critics, and, as

you say, not such fools as to commit ourselves to the proposition of

amendments that can be criticised by others. Nevertheless, for your

sake, Cousin Peter, and on the condition that if I give my advice you

will never say that I gave it, and if you take it that you will never

reproach me if it turns out, as most advice does, very ill,--I will

depart from my custom and hazard my opinion.”

“I accept the conditions.”

“Well then, with every new generation there springs up a new order of

ideas. The earlier the age at which a man seizes the ideas that will

influence his own generation, the more he has a start in the race with

his contemporaries. If Kenelm comprehends at sixteen those intellectual

signs of the time which, when he goes up to college, he will find young

men of eighteen or twenty only just _prepared_ to comprehend, he

will produce a deep impression of his powers for reasoning and their

adaptation to actual life, which will be of great service to him later.

Now the ideas that influence the mass of the rising generation never

have their well-head in the generation itself. They have their source in

the generation before them, generally in a small minority, neglected or

contemned by the great majority which adopt them later. Therefore a lad

at the age of sixteen, if he wants to get at such ideas, must come

into close contact with some superior mind in which they were conceived

twenty or thirty years before. I am consequently for placing Kenelm with

a person from whom the new ideas can be learned. I am also for his being

placed in the metropolis during the process of this initiation. With

such introductions as are at our command, he may come in contact not

only with new ideas, but with eminent men in all vocations. It is a

great thing to mix betimes with clever people. One picks their brains

unconsciously. There is another advantage, and not a small one, in

this early entrance into good society. A youth learns manners,

self-possession, readiness of resource; and he is much less likely to

get into scrapes and contract tastes for low vices and mean dissipation,

when he comes into life wholly his own master, after having acquired

a predilection for refined companionship under the guidance of those

competent to select it. There, I have talked myself out of breath. And

you had better decide at once in favour of my advice; for as I am of a

contradictory temperament, myself of to-morrow may probably contradict

myself of to-day.”

Sir Peter was greatly impressed with his cousin’s argumentative

eloquence.

The Parson smoked his cutty-pipe in silence until appealed to by Sir

Peter, and he then said, “In this programme of education for a Christian

gentleman, the part of Christian seems to me left out.”

“The tendency of the age,” observed Mr. Mivers, calmly, “is towards that

omission. Secular education is the necessary reaction from the special

theological training which arose in the dislike of one set of Christians

to the teaching of another set; and as these antagonists will not agree

how religion is to be taught, either there must be no teaching at all,

or religion must be eliminated from the tuition.”

“That may do very well for some huge system of national education,” said

Sir Peter, “but it does not apply to Kenelm, as one of a family all of

whose members belong to the Established Church. He may be taught the

creed of his forefathers without offending a Dissenter.”

“Which Established Church is he to belong to?” asked Mr. Mivers,--“High

Church, Low Church, Broad Church, Puseyite Church, Ritualistic Church,

or any other Established Church that may be coming into fashion?”

“Pshaw!” said the Parson. “That sneer is out of place. You know very

well that one merit of our Church is the spirit of toleration, which

does not magnify every variety of opinion into a heresy or a schism.

But if Sir Peter sends his son at the age of sixteen to a tutor who

eliminates the religion of Christianity from his teaching, he deserves

to be thrashed within an inch of his life; and,” continued the Parson,

eying Sir Peter sternly, and mechanically turning up his cuffs, “I

should _like_ to thrash him.”

“Gently, John,” said Sir Peter, recoiling; “gently, my dear kinsman. My

heir shall not be educated as a heathen, and Mivers is only bantering

us. Come, Mivers, do you happen to know among your London friends some

man who, though a scholar and a man of the world, is still a Christian?”

“A Christian as by law established?”

“Well--yes.”

“And who will receive Kenelm as a pupil?”

“Of course I am not putting such questions to you out of idle

curiosity.”

“I know exactly the man. He was originally intended for orders, and is

a very learned theologian. He relinquished the thought of the clerical

profession on succeeding to a small landed estate by the sudden death of

an elder brother. He then came to London and bought experience: that

is, he was naturally generous; he became easily taken in; got into

difficulties; the estate was transferred to trustees for the benefit of

creditors, and on the payment of L400 a year to himself. By this time

he was married and had two children. He found the necessity of employing

his pen in order to add to his income, and is one of the ablest

contributors to the periodical press. He is an elegant scholar, an

effective writer, much courted by public men, a thorough gentleman, has

a pleasant house, and receives the best society. Having been once taken

in, he defies any one to take him in again. His experience was not

bought too dearly. No more acute and accomplished man of the world. The

three hundred a year or so that you would pay for Kenelm would suit him

very well. His name is Welby, and he lives in Chester Square.”

“No doubt he is a contributor to ‘The Londoner,’” said the Parson,

sarcastically.

“True. He writes our classical, theological, and metaphysical articles.

Suppose I invite him to come here for a day or two, and you can see him

and judge for yourself, Sir Peter?”

“Do.”

CHAPTER X.

MR. WELBY arrived, and pleased everybody. A man of the happiest manners,

easy and courteous. There was no pedantry in him, yet you could soon see

that his reading covered an extensive surface, and here and there

had dived deeply. He enchanted the Parson by his comments on Saint

Chrysostom; he dazzled Sir Peter with his lore in the antiquities of

ancient Britain; he captivated Kenelm by his readiness to enter into

that most disputatious of sciences called metaphysics; while for Lady

Chillingly, and the three sisters who were invited to meet him, he was

more entertaining, but not less instructive. Equally at home in novels

and in good books, he gave to the spinsters a list of innocent works

in either; while for Lady Chillingly he sparkled with anecdotes of

fashionable life, the newest _bons mots_, the latest scandals. In fact,

Mr. Welby was one of those brilliant persons who adorn any society

amidst which they are thrown. If at heart he was a disappointed man,

the disappointment was concealed by an even serenity of spirits; he

had entertained high and justifiable hopes of a brilliant career and a

lasting reputation as a theologian and a preacher; the succession to

his estate at the age of twenty-three had changed the nature of his

ambition. The charm of his manner was such that he sprang at once into

the fashion, and became beguiled by his own genial temperament into that

lesser but pleasanter kind of ambition which contents itself with social

successes and enjoys the present hour. When his circumstances compelled

him to eke out his income by literary profits, he slid into the grooves

of periodical composition, and resigned all thoughts of the labour

required for any complete work, which might take much time and be

attended with scanty profits. He still remained very popular in society,

and perhaps his general reputation for ability made him fearful to

hazard it by any great undertaking. He was not, like Mivers, a despiser

of all men and all things; but he regarded men and things as an

indifferent though good-natured spectator regards the thronging streets

from a drawing-room window. He could not be called _blase_, but he was

thoroughly _desillusionne_. Once over-romantic, his character now was so

entirely imbued with the neutral tints of life that romance offended his

taste as an obtrusion of violent colour into a sober woof. He was become

a thorough Realist in his code of criticism, and in his worldly mode

of action and thought. But Parson John did not perceive this, for

Welby listened to that gentleman’s eulogies on the Ideal school without

troubling himself to contradict them. He had grown too indolent to be

combative in conversation, and only as a critic betrayed such pugnacity

as remained to him by the polished cruelty of sarcasm.

He came off with flying colours through an examination into his Church

orthodoxy instituted by the Parson and Sir Peter. Amid a cloud of

ecclesiastical erudition, his own opinions vanished in those of the

Fathers. In truth, he was a Realist, in religion as in everything else.

He regarded Christianity as a type of existent civilization, which

ought to be reverenced, as one might recognize the other types of that

civilization; such as the liberty of the press, the representative

system, white neckcloths and black coats of an evening, etc. He

belonged, therefore, to what he himself called the school of Eclectical

Christiology; and accommodated the reasonings of Deism to the doctrines

of the Church, if not as a creed, at least as an institution. Finally,

he united all the Chillingly votes in his favour; and when he departed

from the Hall carried off Kenelm for his initiation into the new ideas

that were to govern his generation.

CHAPTER XI.

KENELM remained a year and a half with this distinguished preceptor.

During that time he learned much in book-lore; he saw much, too, of the

eminent men of the day, in literature, the law, and the senate. He saw,

also, a good deal of the fashionable world. Fine ladies, who had been

friends of his mother in her youth, took him up, counselled and petted

him,--one in especial, the Marchioness of Glenalvon, to whom he was

endeared by grateful association, for her youngest son had been a

fellow-pupil of Kenelm at Merton School, and Kenelm had saved his life

from drowning. The poor boy died of consumption later, and her grief for

his loss made her affection for Kenelm yet more tender. Lady Glenalvon

was one of the queens of the London world. Though in the fiftieth

year she was still very handsome: she was also very accomplished, very

clever, and very kind-hearted, as some of such queens are; just one

of those women invaluable in forming the manners and elevating the

character of young men destined to make a figure in after-life. But she

was very angry with herself in thinking that she failed to arouse any

such ambition in the heir of the Chillinglys.

It may here be said that Kenelm was not without great advantages of form

and countenance. He was tall, and the youthful grace of his proportions

concealed his physical strength, which was extraordinary rather from the

iron texture than the bulk of his thews and sinews. His face, though it

certainly lacked the roundness of youth, had a grave, sombre, haunting

sort of beauty, not artistically regular, but picturesque, peculiar,

with large dark expressive eyes, and a certain indescribable combination

of sweetness and melancholy in his quiet smile. He never laughed

audibly, but he had a quick sense of the comic, and his eye would laugh

when his lips were silent. He would say queer, droll, unexpected things

which passed for humour; but, save for that gleam in the eye, he could

not have said them with more seeming innocence of intentional joke if he

had been a monk of La Trappe looking up from the grave he was digging in

order to utter “memento mori.”

That face of his was a great “take in.” Women thought it full of

romantic sentiment; the face of one easily moved to love, and whose love

would be replete alike with poetry and passion. But he remained as proof

as the youthful Hippolytus to all female attraction. He delighted the

Parson by keeping up his practice in athletic pursuits; and obtained a

reputation at the pugilistic school, which he attended regularly, as the

best gentleman boxer about town.

He made many acquaintances, but still formed no friendships. Yet every

one who saw him much conceived affection for him. If he did not return

that affection, he did not repel it. He was exceedingly gentle in voice

and manner, and had all his father’s placidity of temper: children and

dogs took to him as by instinct.

On leaving Mr. Welby’s, Kenelm carried to Cambridge a mind largely

stocked with the new ideas that were budding into leaf. He certainly

astonished the other freshmen, and occasionally puzzled the mighty

Fellows of Trinity and St. John’s. But he gradually withdrew himself

much from general society. In fact, he was too old in mind for his

years; and after having mixed in the choicest circles of a metropolis,

college suppers and wine parties had little charm for him. He maintained

his pugilistic renown; and on certain occasions, when some delicate

undergraduate had been bullied by some gigantic bargeman, his muscular

Christianity nobly developed itself. He did not do as much as he might

have done in the more intellectual ways of academical distinction.

Still, he was always among the first in the college examinations; he won

two university prizes, and took a very creditable degree, after which

he returned home, more odd, more saturnine--in short, less like other

people--than when he had left Merton School. He had woven a solitude

round him out of his own heart, and in that solitude he sat still and

watchful as a spider sits in his web.

Whether from natural temperament or from his educational training under

such teachers as Mr. Mivers, who carried out the new ideas of reform by

revering nothing in the past, and Mr. Welby, who accepted the routine of

the present as realistic, and pooh-poohed all visions of the future as

idealistic, Kenelm’s chief mental characteristic was a kind of tranquil

indifferentism. It was difficult to detect in him either of those

ordinary incentives to action,--vanity or ambition, the yearning for

applause or the desire of power. To all female fascinations he had been

hitherto star-proof. He had never experienced love, but he had read

a good deal about it; and that passion seemed to him an unaccountable

aberration of human reason, and an ignominious surrender of the

equanimity of thought which it should be the object of masculine natures

to maintain undisturbed. A very eloquent book in praise of celibacy, and

entitled “The Approach to the Angels,” written by that eminent Oxford

scholar, Decimus Roach, had produced so remarkable an effect upon his

youthful mind that, had he been a Roman Catholic, he might have become

a monk. Where he most evinced ardour it was a logician’s ardour for

abstract truth; that is, for what he considered truth: and, as what

seems truth to one man is sure to seem falsehood to some other man, this

predilection of his was not without its inconveniences and dangers, as

may probably be seen in the following chapter.

Meanwhile, rightly to appreciate his conduct therein, I entreat thee, O

candid reader (not that any reader ever is candid), to remember that he

is brimful of new ideas, which, met by a deep and hostile undercurrent

of old ideas, become more provocatively billowy and surging.

CHAPTER XII.

THERE had been great festivities at Exmundham, in celebration of the

honour bestowed upon the world by the fact that Kenelm Chillingly had

lived twenty-one years in it.

The young heir had made a speech to the assembled tenants and other

admitted revellers, which had by no means added to the exhilaration of

the proceedings. He spoke with a fluency and self-possession which were

surprising in a youth addressing a multitude for the first time. But his

speech was not cheerful.

The principal tenant on the estate, in proposing his health, had

naturally referred to the long line of his ancestors. His father’s

merits as man and landlord had been enthusiastically commemorated; and

many happy auguries for his own future career had been drawn, partly

from the excellences of his parentage, partly from his own youthful

promise in the honours achieved at the University.

Kenelm Chillingly in reply largely availed himself of those new ideas

which were to influence the rising generation, and with which he had

been rendered familiar by the journal of Mr. Mivers and the conversation

of Mr. Welby.

He briefly disposed of the ancestral part of the question. He observed

that it was singular to note how long any given family or dynasty could

continue to flourish in any given nook of matter in creation, without

any exhibition of intellectual powers beyond those displayed by a

succession of vegetable crops. “It is certainly true,” he said, “that

the Chillinglys have lived in this place from father to son for about a

fourth part of the history of the world, since the date which Sir Isaac

Newton assigns to the Deluge. But, so far as can be judged by existent

records, the world has not been in any way wiser or better for their

existence. They were born to eat as long as they could eat, and when

they could eat no longer they died. Not that in this respect they were

a whit less insignificant than the generality of their fellow-creatures.

Most of us now present,” continued the youthful orator, “are only born

in order to die; and the chief consolation of our wounded pride in

admitting this fact is in the probability that our posterity will not

be of more consequence to the scheme of Nature than we ourselves are.”

Passing from that philosophical view of his own ancestors in particular,

and of the human race in general, Kenelm Chillingly then touched with

serene analysis on the eulogies lavished on his father as man and

landlord.

“As man,” he said, “my father no doubt deserves all that can be said

by man in favour of man. But what, at the best, is man? A crude,

struggling, undeveloped embryo, of whom it is the highest attribute that

he feels a vague consciousness that he is only an embryo, and cannot

complete himself till he ceases to be a man; that is, until he becomes

another being in another form of existence. We can praise a dog as

a dog, because a dog is a completed _ens_, and not an embryo. But to

praise a man as man, forgetting that he is only a germ out of which a

form wholly different is ultimately to spring, is equally opposed

to Scriptural belief in his present crudity and imperfection, and to

psychological or metaphysical examination of a mental construction

evidently designed for purposes that he can never fulfil as man. That my

father is an embryo not more incomplete than any present is quite true;

but that, you will see on reflection, is saying very little on his

behalf. Even in the boasted physical formation of us men, you are

aware that the best-shaped amongst us, according to the last scientific

discoveries, is only a development of some hideous hairy animal, such

as a gorilla; and the ancestral gorilla itself had its own aboriginal

forefather in a small marine animal shaped like a two-necked bottle. The

probability is that, some day or other, we shall be exterminated by a

new development of species.

“As for the merits assigned to my father as landlord, I must

respectfully dissent from the panegyrics so rashly bestowed on him. For

all sound reasoners must concur in this, that the first duty of an owner

of land is not to the occupiers to whom he leases it, but to the nation

at large. It is his duty to see that the land yields to the community

the utmost it can yield. In order to effect this object, a landlord

should put up his farms to competition, exacting the highest rent he can

possibly get from responsible competitors. Competitive examination is

the enlightened order of the day, even in professions in which the best

men would have qualities that defy examination. In agriculture, happily,

the principle of competitive examination is not so hostile to the choice

of the best man as it must be, for instance, in diplomacy, where a

Talleyrand would be excluded for knowing no language but his own; and

still more in the army, where promotion would be denied to an officer

who, like Marlborough, could not spell. But in agriculture a landlord

has only to inquire who can give the highest rent, having the largest

capital, subject by the strictest penalties of law to the conditions of

a lease dictated by the most scientific agriculturists under penalties

fixed by the most cautious conveyancers. By this mode of procedure,

recommended by the most liberal economists of our age,--barring those

still more liberal who deny that property in land is any property at

all,--by this mode of procedure, I say, a landlord does his duty to his

country. He secures tenants who can produce the most to the community by

their capital, tested through competitive examination in their bankers’

accounts and the security they can give, and through the rigidity of

covenants suggested by a Liebig and reduced into law by a Chitty. But on

my father’s land I see a great many tenants with little skill and less

capital, ignorant of a Liebig and revolting from a Chitty, and no

filial enthusiasm can induce me honestly to say that my father is a good

landlord. He has preferred his affection for individuals to his duties

to the community. It is not, my friends, a question whether a handful of

farmers like yourselves go to the workhouse or not. It is a consumer’s

question. Do you produce the maximum of corn to the consumer?

“With respect to myself,” continued the orator, warming as the cold

he had engendered in his audience became more freezingly felt,--“with

respect to myself, I do not deny that, owing to the accident of training

for a very faulty and contracted course of education, I have obtained

what are called ‘honours’ at the University of Cambridge; but you must

not regard that fact as a promise of any worth in my future passage

through life. Some of the most useless persons--especially narrow-minded

and bigoted--have acquired far higher honours at the University than

have fallen to my lot.

“I thank you no less for the civil things you have said of me and of my

family; but I shall endeavour to walk to that grave to which we are all

bound with a tranquil indifference as to what people may say of me in

so short a journey. And the sooner, my friends, we get to our journey’s

end, the better our chance of escaping a great many pains, troubles,

sins, and diseases. So that when I drink to your good healths, you must

feel that in reality I wish you an early deliverance from the ills to

which flesh is exposed, and which so generally increase with our years

that good health is scarcely compatible with the decaying faculties of

old age. Gentlemen, your good healths!”

CHAPTER XIII.

THE morning after these birthday rejoicings, Sir Peter and Lady

Chillingly held a long consultation on the peculiarities of their heir,

and the best mode of instilling into his mind the expediency either

of entertaining more pleasing views, or at least of professing less

unpopular sentiments; compatibly of course, though they did not say it,

with the new ideas that were to govern his century. Having come to an

agreement on this delicate subject, they went forth, arm in arm, in

search of their heir. Kenelm seldom met them at breakfast. He was an

early riser, and accustomed to solitary rambles before his parents were

out of bed.

The worthy pair found Kenelm seated on the banks of a trout-stream that

meandered through Chillingly Park, dipping his line into the water, and

yawning, with apparent relief in that operation.

“Does fishing amuse you, my boy?” said Sir Peter, heartily.

“Not in the least, sir,” answered Kenelm.

“Then why do you do it?” asked Lady Chillingly.

“Because I know nothing else that amuses me more.”

“Ah! that is it,” said Sir Peter: “the whole secret of Kenelm’s oddities

is to be found in these words, my dear; he needs amusement. Voltaire

says truly, ‘Amusement is one of the wants of man.’ And if Kenelm could

be amused like other people, he would be like other people.”

“In that case,” said Kenelm, gravely, and extracting from the water

a small but lively trout, which settled itself in Lady Chillingly’s

lap,--“in that case I would rather not be amused. I have no interest

in the absurdities of other people. The instinct of self-preservation

compels me to have some interest in my own.”

“Kenelm, sir,” exclaimed Lady Chillingly, with an animation into which

her tranquil ladyship was very rarely betrayed, “take away that horrid

damp thing! Put down your rod and attend to what your father says. Your

strange conduct gives us cause of serious anxiety.”

Kenelm unhooked the trout, deposited the fish in his basket, and raising

his large eyes to his father’s face, said, “What is there in my conduct

that occasions you displeasure?”

“Not displeasure, Kenelm,” said Sir Peter, kindly, “but anxiety; your

mother has hit upon the right word. You see, my dear son, that it is

my wish that you should distinguish yourself in the world. You might

represent this county, as your ancestors have done before. I have looked

forward to the proceedings of yesterday as an admirable occasion for

your introduction to your future constituents. Oratory is the talent

most appreciated in a free country, and why should you not be an orator?

Demosthenes says that delivery, delivery, delivery, is the art of

oratory; and your delivery is excellent, graceful, self-possessed,

classical.”

“Pardon me, my dear father, Demosthenes does not say delivery,

nor action, as the word is commonly rendered; he says, ‘acting, or

stage-play,’--the art by which a man delivers a speech in a feigned

character, whence we get the word hypocrisy. Hypocrisy, hypocrisy,

hypocrisy! is, according to Demosthenes, the triple art of the orator.

Do you wish me to become triply a hypocrite?”

“Kenelm, I am ashamed of you. You know as well as I do that it is only

by metaphor that you can twist the word ascribed to the great Athenian

into the sense of hypocrisy. But assuming it, as you say, to mean not

delivery, but acting, I understand why your debut as an orator was

not successful. Your delivery was excellent, your acting defective.

An orator should please, conciliate, persuade, prepossess. You did the

reverse of all this; and though you produced a great effect, the effect

was so decidedly to your disadvantage that it would have lost you an

election on any hustings in England.”

“Am I to understand, my dear father,” said Kenelm, in the mournful and

compassionate tones with which a pious minister of the Church reproves

some abandoned and hoary sinner,--“am I to understand that you would

commend to your son the adoption of deliberate falsehood for the gain of

a selfish advantage?”

“Deliberate falsehood! you impertinent puppy!”

“Puppy!” repeated Kenelm, not indignantly but musingly,--“puppy! a

well-bred puppy takes after its parents.”

Sir Peter burst out laughing.

Lady Chillingly rose with dignity, shook her gown, unfolded her parasol,

and stalked away speechless.

“Now, look you, Kenelm,” said Sir Peter, as soon as he had composed

himself. “These quips and humours of yours are amusing enough to an

eccentric man like myself, but they will not do for the world; and

how at your age, and with the rare advantages you have had in an early

introduction to the best intellectual society, under the guidance of a

tutor acquainted with the new ideas which are to influence the

conduct of statesmen, you could have made so silly a speech as you did

yesterday, I cannot understand.”

“My dear father, allow me to assure you that the ideas I expressed are

the new ideas most in vogue,--ideas expressed in still plainer, or, if

you prefer the epithet, still sillier terms than I employed. You will

find them instilled into the public mind by ‘The Londoner’ and by most

intellectual journals of a liberal character.”

“Kenelm, Kenelm, such ideas would turn the world topsy-turvy.”

“New ideas always do tend to turn old ideas topsy-turvy. And the world,

after all, is only an idea, which is turned topsy-turvy with every

successive century.”

“You make me sick of the word ‘ideas.’ Leave off your metaphysics and

study real life.”

“It is real life which I did study under Mr. Welby. He is the

Archimandrite of Realism. It is sham life which you wish me to study. To

oblige you I am willing to commence it. I dare say it is very pleasant.

Real life is not; on the contrary--dull,” and Kenelm yawned again.

“Have you no young friends among your fellow-collegians?”

“Friends! certainly not, sir. But I believe I have some enemies, who

answer the same purpose as friends, only they don’t hurt one so much.”

“Do you mean to say that you lived alone at Cambridge?”

“No, I lived a good deal with Aristophanes, and a little with Conic

Sections and Hydrostatics.”

“Books. Dry company.”

“More innocent, at least, than moist company. Did you ever get drunk,

sir?”

“Drunk!”

“I tried to do so once with the young companions whom you would commend

to me as friends. I don’t think I succeeded, but I woke with a headache.

Real life at college abounds with headache.”

“Kenelm, my boy, one thing is clear: you must travel.”

“As you please, sir. Marcus Antoninus says that it is all one to a stone

whether it be thrown upwards or downwards. When shall I start?”

“Very soon. Of course there are preparations to make; you should have a

travelling companion. I don’t mean a tutor,--you are too clever and

too steady to need one,--but a pleasant, sensible, well-mannered young

person of your own age.”

“My own age,--male or female?”

Sir Peter tried hard to frown. The utmost he could do was to reply

gravely, “FEMALE! If I said you were too steady to need a tutor, it was

because you have hitherto seemed little likely to be led out of your

way by female allurements. Among your other studies may I inquire if you

have included that which no man has ever yet thoroughly mastered,--the

study of women?”

“Certainly. Do you object to my catching another trout?”

“Trout be--blessed, or the reverse. So you have studied woman. I should

never have thought it. Where and when did you commence that department

of science?”

“When? ever since I was ten years old. Where? first in your own house,

then at college. Hush!--a bite,” and another trout left its native

element and alighted on Sir Peter’s nose, whence it was solemnly

transferred to the basket.

“At ten years old, and in my own house! That flaunting hussy Jane, the

under-housemaid--”

“Jane! No, sir. Pamela, Miss Byron, Clarissa,--females in Richardson,

who, according to Dr. Johnson, ‘taught the passions to move at the

command of virtue.’ I trust for your sake that Dr. Johnson did not err

in that assertion, for I found all these females at night in your own

private apartments.”

“Oh!” said Sir Peter, “that’s all?”

“All I remember at ten years old,” replied Kenelm.

“And at Mr. Welby’s or at college,” proceeded Sir Peter, timorously,

“was your acquaintance with females of the same kind?”

Kenelm shook his head. “Much worse: they were very naughty indeed at

college.”

“I should think so, with such a lot of young fellows running after

them.”

“Very few fellows run after the females. I mean--rather avoid them.”

“So much the better.”

“No, my father, so much the worse; without an intimate knowledge of

those females there is little use going to college at all.”

“Explain yourself.”

“Every one who receives a classical education is introduced into their

society,--Pyrrha and Lydia, Glycera and Corinna, and many more of the

same sort; and then the females in Aristophanes, what do you say to

them, sir?”

“Is it only females who lived two thousand or three thousand years ago,

or more probably never lived at all, whose intimacy you have cultivated?

Have you never admired any real women?”

“Real women! I never met one. Never met a woman who was not a sham,

a sham from the moment she is told to be pretty-behaved, conceal her

sentiments, and look fibs when she does not speak them. But if I am to

learn sham life, I suppose I must put up with sham women.”

“Have you been crossed in love that you speak so bitterly of the sex?”

“I don’t speak bitterly of the sex. Examine any woman on her oath, and

she’ll own she is a sham, always has been, and always will be, and is

proud of it.”

“I am glad your mother is not by to hear you. You will think differently

one of these days. Meanwhile, to turn to the other sex, is there no

young man of your own rank with whom you would like to travel?”

“Certainly not. I hate quarrelling.”

“As you please. But you cannot go quite alone: I will find you a good

travelling-servant. I must write to town to-day about your preparations,

and in another week or so I hope all will be ready. Your allowance will

be whatever you like to fix it at; you have never been extravagant,

and--boy--I love you. Amuse yourself, enjoy yourself, and come back

cured of your oddities, but preserving your honour.”

Sir Peter bent down and kissed his son’s brow. Kenelm was moved; he

rose, put his arm round his father’s shoulder, and lovingly said, in

an undertone, “If ever I am tempted to do a base thing, may I remember

whose son I am: I shall be safe then.” He withdrew his arm as he said

this, and took his solitary way along the banks of the stream, forgetful

of rod and line.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE young man continued to skirt the side of the stream until he reached

the boundary pale of the park. Here, placed on a rough grass mound,

some former proprietor, of a social temperament, had built a kind of

belvidere, so as to command a cheerful view of the high road below.

Mechanically the heir of the Chillinglys ascended the mound, seated

himself within the belvidere, and leaned his chin on his hand in a

thoughtful attitude. It was rarely that the building was honoured by a

human visitor: its habitual occupants were spiders. Of those industrious

insects it was a well-populated colony. Their webs, darkened with

dust and ornamented with the wings and legs and skeletons of many an

unfortunate traveller, clung thick to angle and window-sill, festooned

the rickety table on which the young man leaned his elbow, and described

geometrical circles and rhomboids between the gaping rails that formed

the backs of venerable chairs. One large black spider--who was probably

the oldest inhabitant, and held possession of the best place by the

window, ready to offer perfidious welcome to every winged itinerant

who might be tempted to turn aside from the high road for the sake of

a little cool and repose--rushed from its innermost penetralia at the

entrance of Kenelm, and remained motionless in the centre of its meshes,

staring at him. It did not seem quite sure whether the stranger was too

big or not.

“It is a wonderful proof of the wisdom of Providence,” said Kenelm,

“that whenever any large number of its creatures forms a community

or class, a secret element of disunion enters into the hearts of the

individuals forming the congregation, and prevents their co-operating

heartily and effectually for their common interest. ‘The fleas would

have dragged me out of bed if they had been unanimous,’ said the great

Mr. Curran; and there can be no doubt that if all the spiders in this

commonwealth would unite to attack me in a body, I should fall a victim

to their combined nippers. But spiders, though inhabiting the same

region, constituting the same race, animated by the same instincts,

do not combine even against a butterfly: each seeks his own special

advantage, and not that of the community at large. And how completely

the life of each thing resembles a circle in this respect, that it can

never touch another circle at more than one point. Nay, I doubt if it

quite touches it even there,--there is a space between every atom; self

is always selfish: and yet there are eminent masters in the Academe of

New Ideas who wish to make us believe that all the working classes of a

civilized world could merge every difference of race, creed, intellect,

individual propensities and interests into the construction of a single

web, stocked as a larder in common!” Here the soliloquist came to a dead

stop, and, leaning out of the window, contemplated the high road. It was

a very fine high road, straight and level, kept in excellent order by

turn pikes at every eight miles. A pleasant greensward bordered it on

either side, and under the belvidere the benevolence of some mediaeval

Chillingly had placed a little drinking-fountain for the refreshment of

wayfarers. Close to the fountain stood a rude stone bench, overshadowed

by a large willow, and commanding from the high table-ground on which

it was placed a wide view of cornfields, meadows, and distant hills,

suffused in the mellow light of the summer sun. Along that road there

came successively a wagon filled with passengers seated on straw,--an

old woman, a pretty girl, two children; then a stout farmer going to

market in his dog-cart; then three flies carrying fares to the nearest

railway station; then a handsome young man on horseback, a handsome

young lady by his side, a groom behind. It was easy to see that the

young man and young lady were lovers. See it in his ardent looks and

serious lips parted but for whispers only to be heard by her; see it

in her downcast eyes and heightened colour. “‘Alas! regardless of

their doom,’” muttered Kenelm, “what trouble those ‘little victims’

are preparing for themselves and their progeny! Would I could lend them

Decimus Roach’s ‘Approach to the Angels’!” The road now for some minutes

became solitary and still, when there was heard to the right a sprightly

sort of carol, half sung, half recited, in musical voice, with a

singularly clear enunciation, so that the words reached Kenelm’s ear

distinctly. They ran thus:--

“Black Karl looked forth from his cottage door,

He looked on the forest green;

And down the path, with his dogs before,

Came the Ritter of Neirestein:

Singing, singing, lustily singing,

Down the path with his dogs before,

Came the Ritter of Neirestein.”

At a voice so English, attuned to a strain so Germanic, Kenelm pricked

up attentive ears, and, turning his eye down the road, beheld, emerging

from the shade of beeches that overhung the park pales, a figure that

did not altogether harmonize with the idea of a Ritter of Neirestein. It

was, nevertheless, a picturesque figure enough. The man was attired in a

somewhat threadbare suit of Lincoln green, with a high-crowned Tyrolese

hat; a knapsack was slung behind his shoulders, and he was attended by a

white Pomeranian dog, evidently foot-sore, but doing his best to appear

proficient in the chase by limping some yards in advance of his master,

and sniffing into the hedges for rats and mice, and such small deer.

By the time the pedestrian had reached to the close of his refrain he

had gained the fountain, and greeted it with an exclamation of pleasure.

Slipping the knapsack from his shoulder, he filled the iron ladle

attached to the basin. He then called the dog by the name of Max, and

held the ladle for him to drink. Not till the animal had satisfied his

thirst did the master assuage his own. Then, lifting his hat and bathing

his temples and face, the pedestrian seated himself on the bench,

and the dog nestled on the turf at his feet. After a little pause the

wayfarer began again, though in a lower and slower tone, to chant his

refrain, and proceeded, with abrupt snatches, to link the verse on

to another stanza. It was evident that he was either endeavouring to

remember or to invent, and it seemed rather like the latter and more

laborious operation of mind.

“‘Why on foot, why on foot, Ritter Karl,’ quoth he,

‘And not on thy palfrey gray?’

Palfrey gray--hum--gray.

“‘The run of ill-luck was too strong for me,

‘And has galloped my steed away.’

That will do: good!”

“Good indeed! He is easily satisfied,” muttered Kenelm. “But such

pedestrians don’t pass the road every day. Let us talk to him.” So

saying he slipped quietly out of the window, descended the mound,

and letting himself into the road by a screened wicket-gate, took his

noiseless stand behind the wayfarer and beneath the bowery willow.

The man had now sunk into silence. Perhaps he had tired himself of

rhymes; or perhaps the mechanism of verse-making had been replaced by

that kind of sentiment, or that kind of revery, which is common to the

temperaments of those who indulge in verse-making. But the loveliness

of the scene before him had caught his eye, and fixed it into an intent

gaze upon wooded landscapes stretching farther and farther to the range

of hills on which the heaven seemed to rest.

“I should like to hear the rest of that German ballad,” said a voice,

abruptly.

The wayfarer started, and, turning round, presented to Kenelm’s view

a countenance in the ripest noon of manhood, with locks and beard of a

deep rich auburn, bright blue eyes, and a wonderful nameless charm both

of feature and expression, very cheerful, very frank, and not without a

certain nobleness of character which seemed to exact respect.

“I beg your pardon for my interruption,” said Kenelm, lifting his hat:

“but I overheard you reciting; and though I suppose your verses are a

translation from the German, I don’t remember anything like them in such

popular German poets as I happen to have read.”

“It is not a translation, sir,” replied the itinerant. “I was only

trying to string together some ideas that came into my head this fine

morning.”

“You are a poet, then?” said Kenelm, seating himself on the bench.

“I dare not say poet. I am a verse-maker.”

“Sir, I know there is a distinction. Many poets of the present day,

considered very good, are uncommonly bad verse-makers. For my part, I

could more readily imagine them to be good poets if they did not make

verses at all. But can I not hear the rest of the ballad?”

“Alas! the rest of the ballad is not yet made. It is rather a long

subject, and my flights are very brief.”

“That is much in their favour, and very unlike the poetry in fashion.

You do not belong, I think, to this neighbourhood. Are you and your dog

travelling far?”

“It is my holiday time, and I ramble on through the summer. I am

travelling far, for I travel till September. Life amid summer fields is

a very joyous thing.”

“Is it indeed?” said Kenelm, with much _naivete_. “I should have thought

that long before September you would have got very much bored with the

fields and the dog and yourself altogether. But, to be sure, you

have the resource of verse-making, and that seems a very pleasant and

absorbing occupation to those who practise it,--from our old friend

Horace, kneading laboured Alcaics into honey in his summer rambles among

the watered woodlands of Tibur, to Cardinal Richelieu, employing himself

on French rhymes in the intervals between chopping off noblemen’s heads.

It does not seem to signify much whether the verses be good or bad,

so far as the pleasure of the verse-maker himself is concerned; for

Richelieu was as much charmed with his occupation as Horace was, and his

verses were certainly not Horatian.”

“Surely at your age, sir, and with your evident education--”

“Say culture; that’s the word in fashion nowadays.”

“Well, your evident culture, you must have made verses.”

“Latin verses, yes; and occasionally Greek. I was obliged to do so at

school. It did not amuse me.”

“Try English.”

Kenelm shook his head. “Not I. Every cobbler should stick to his last.”

“Well, put aside the verse-making: don’t you find a sensible

enjoyment in those solitary summer walks, when you have Nature all to

yourself,--enjoyment in marking all the mobile evanescent changes in her

face,--her laugh, her smile, her tears, her very frown!”

“Assuming that by Nature you mean a mechanical series of external

phenomena, I object to your speaking of a machinery as if it were a

person of the feminine gender,--_her_ laugh, _her_ smile, etc. As

well talk of the laugh and smile of a steam-engine. But to descend to

common-sense. I grant there is some pleasure in solitary rambles in fine

weather and amid varying scenery. You say that it is a holiday excursion

that you are enjoying. I presume, therefore, that you have some

practical occupation which consumes the time that you do not devote to a

holiday?”

“Yes; I am not altogether an idler. I work sometimes, though not so hard

as I ought. ‘Life is earnest,’ as the poet says. But I and my dog are

rested now, and as I have still a long walk before me I must wish you

good-day.”

“I fear,” said Kenelm, with a grave and sweet politeness of tone and

manner, which he could command at times, and which, in its difference

from merely conventional urbanity, was not without fascination,--“I

fear that I have offended you by a question that must have seemed to you

inquisitive, perhaps impertinent; accept my excuse: it is very rarely

that I meet any one who interests me; and you do.” As he spoke he

offered his hand, which the wayfarer shook very cordially.

“I should be a churl indeed if your question could have given me

offence. It is rather perhaps I who am guilty of impertinence, if I

take advantage of my seniority in years and tender you a counsel. Do not

despise Nature or regard her as a steam-engine; you will find in her

a very agreeable and conversable friend if you will cultivate her

intimacy. And I don’t know a better mode of doing so at your age, and

with your strong limbs, than putting a knapsack on your shoulders and

turning foot-traveller like myself.”

“Sir, I thank you for your counsel; and I trust we may meet again

and interchange ideas as to the thing you call Nature,--a thing which

science and art never appear to see with the same eyes. If to an artist

Nature has a soul, why, so has a steam-engine. Art gifts with soul all

matter that it contemplates: science turns all that is already gifted

with soul into matter. Good-day, sir.”

Here Kenelm turned back abruptly, and the traveller went his way,

silently and thoughtfully.

CHAPTER XV.

KENELM retraced his steps homeward under the shade of his “old

hereditary trees.” One might have thought his path along the

greenswards, and by the side of the babbling rivulet, was pleasanter and

more conducive to peaceful thoughts than the broad, dusty thoroughfare

along which plodded the wanderer he had quitted. But the man addicted to

revery forms his own landscapes and colours his own skies.

“It is,” soliloquized Kenelm Chillingly, “a strange yearning I have

long felt,--to get out of myself, to get, as it were, into another man’s

skin, and have a little variety of thought and emotion. One’s self is

always the same self; and that is why I yawn so often. But if I can’t

get into another man’s skin, the next best thing is to get as unlike

myself as I possibly can do. Let me see what is myself. Myself is

Kenelm Chillingly, son and heir to a rich gentleman. But a fellow with

a knapsack on his back, sleeping at wayside inns, is not at all like

Kenelm Chillingly; especially if he is very short of money and may come

to want a dinner. Perhaps that sort of fellow may take a livelier view

of things: he can’t take a duller one. Courage, Myself: you and I can

but try.”

For the next two days Kenelm was observed to be unusually pleasant. He

yawned much less frequently, walked with his father, played piquet

with his mother, was more like other people. Sir Peter was charmed:

he ascribed this happy change to the preparations he was making

for Kenelm’s travelling in style. The proud father was in active

correspondence with his great London friends, seeking letters of

introduction for Kenelm to all the courts of Europe. Portmanteaus, with

every modern convenience, were ordered; an experienced courier, who

could talk all languages and cook French dishes if required, was

invited to name his terms. In short, every arrangement worthy a young

patrician’s entrance into the great world was in rapid progress, when

suddenly Kenelm Chillingly disappeared, leaving behind him on Sir

Peter’s library table the following letter:--

MY VERY DEAR FATHER,--Obedient to your desire, I depart in search of

real life and real persons, or of the best imitations of them. Forgive

me, I beseech you, if I commence that search in my own way. I have seen

enough of ladies and gentlemen for the present: they must be all very

much alike in every part of the world. You desired me to be amused. I

go to try if that be possible. Ladies and gentlemen are not amusing; the

more ladylike or gentlemanlike they are, the more insipid I find them.

My dear father, I go in quest of adventure like Amadis of Gaul, like Don

Quixote, like Gil Blas, like Roderick Random; like, in short, the only

people seeking real life, the people who never existed except in books.

I go on foot; I go alone. I have provided myself with a larger amount of

money than I ought to spend, because every man must buy experience,

and the first fees are heavy. In fact, I have put fifty pounds into my

pocket-book and into my purse five sovereigns and seventeen shillings.

This sum ought to last me a year; but I dare say inexperience will do

me out of it in a month, so we will count it as nothing. Since you have

asked me to fix my own allowance, I will beg you kindly to commence it

this day in advance, by an order to your banker to cash my checks to the

amount of five pounds, and to the same amount monthly; namely, at the

rate of sixty pounds a year. With that sum I can’t starve, and if I

want more it may be amusing to work for it. Pray don’t send after me,

or institute inquiries, or disturb the household and set all the

neighbourhood talking, by any mention either of my project or of your

surprise at it. I will not fail to write to you from time to time.

You will judge best what to say to my dear mother. If you tell her the

truth, which of course I should do did I tell her anything, my request

is virtually frustrated, and I shall be the talk of the county. You,

I know, don’t think telling fibs is immoral when it happens to be

convenient, as it would be in this case.

I expect to be absent a year or eighteen months; if I prolong my travels

it shall be in the way you proposed. I will then take my place in polite

society, call upon you to pay all expenses, and fib on my own account

to any extent required by that world of fiction which is peopled by

illusions and governed by shams.

Heaven bless you, my dear Father, and be quite sure that if I get into

any trouble requiring a friend, it is to you I shall turn. As yet I have

no other friend on earth, and with prudence and good luck I may escape

the infliction of any other friend.

Yours ever affectionately,

KENELM.

P. S.--Dear Father, I open my letter in your library to say again “Bless

you,” and to tell you how fondly I kissed your old beaver gloves, which

I found on the table.

When Sir Peter came to that postscript he took off his spectacles and

wiped them: they were very moist.

Then he fell into a profound meditation. Sir Peter was, as I have said,

a learned man; he was also in some things a sensible man, and he had a

strong sympathy with the humorous side of his son’s crotchety character.

What was to be said to Lady Chillingly? That matron was quite guiltless

of any crime which should deprive her of a husband’s confidence in

a matter relating to her only son. She was a virtuous matron; morals

irreproachable, manners dignified, and _she-baronety_. Any one seeing

her for the first time would intuitively say, “Your ladyship.” Was

this a matron to be suppressed in any well-ordered domestic circle? Sir

Peter’s conscience loudly answered, “No;” but when, putting conscience

into his pocket, he regarded the question at issue as a man of the

world, Sir Peter felt that to communicate the contents of his son’s

letter to Lady Chillingly would be the foolishest thing he could

possibly do. Did she know that Kenelm had absconded with the family

dignity invested in his very name, no marital authority short of such

abuses of power as constitute the offence of cruelty in a wife’s

action for divorce from social board and nuptial bed could prevent Lady

Chillingly from summoning all the grooms, sending them in all directions

with strict orders to bring back the runaway dead or alive; the walls

would be placarded with hand-bills, “Strayed from his home,” etc.; the

police would be telegraphing private instructions from town to town;

the scandal would stick to Kenelm Chillingly for life, accompanied with

vague hints of criminal propensities and insane hallucinations; he would

be ever afterwards pointed out as “THE MAN WHO HAD DISAPPEARED.” And to

disappear and to turn up again, instead of being murdered, is the most

hateful thing a man can do: all the newspapers bark at him, “Tray,

Blanche, Sweetheart, and all;” strict explanations of the unseemly fact

of his safe existence are demanded in the name of public decorum, and no

explanations are accepted; it is life saved, character lost.

Sir Peter seized his hat and walked forth, not to deliberate whether to

fib or not to fib to the wife of his bosom, but to consider what kind of

fib would the most quickly sink into the bosom of his wife.

A few turns to and fro on the terrace sufficed for the conception and

maturing of the fib selected; a proof that Sir Peter was a practised

fibber. He re-entered the house, passed into her ladyship’s habitual

sitting-room, and said with careless gayety, “My old friend the Duke of

Clareville is just setting off on a tour to Switzerland with his family.

His youngest daughter, Lady Jane, is a pretty girl, and would not be a

bad match for Kenelm.”

“Lady Jane, the youngest daughter with fair hair, whom I saw last as

a very charming child, nursing a lovely doll presented to her by the

Empress Eugenie,--a good match indeed for Kenelm.”

“I am glad you agree with me. Would it not be a favourable step towards

that alliance, and an excellent thing for Kenelm generally, if he were

to visit the Continent as one of the Duke’s travelling party?”

“Of course it would.”

“Then you approve what I have done; the Duke starts the day after

to-morrow, and I have packed Kenelm off to town, with a letter to my old

friend. You will excuse all leave taking. You know that though the best

of sons he is an odd fellow; and seeing that I had talked him into it,

I struck while the iron was hot, and sent him off by the express at nine

o’clock this morning, for fear that if I allowed any delay he would talk

himself out of it.”

“Do you mean to say Kenelm is actually gone? Good gracious.”

Sir Peter stole softly from the room, and summoning his valet, said, “I

have sent Mr. Chillingly to London. Pack up the clothes he is likely

to want, so that he can have them sent at once, whenever he writes for

them.”

And thus, by a judicious violation of truth on the part of his father,

that exemplary truth-teller Kenelm Chillingly saved the honour of

his house and his own reputation from the breath of scandal and the

inquisition of the police. He was not “THE MAN WHO HAD DISAPPEARED.”

BOOK II.

CHAPTER I.

KENELM CHILLINGLY had quitted the paternal home at daybreak before any

of the household was astir. “Unquestionably,” said he, as he walked

along the solitary lanes,--“unquestionably I begin the world as poets

begin poetry, an imitator and a plagiarist. I am imitating an itinerant

verse-maker, as, no doubt, he began by imitating some other maker

of verse. But if there be anything in me, it will work itself out in

original form. And, after all, the verse-maker is not the inventor of

ideas. Adventure on foot is a notion that remounts to the age of fable.

Hercules, for instance; that was the way in which he got to heaven, as

a foot-traveller. How solitary the world is at this hour! Is it not for

that reason that this is of all hours the most beautiful?”

Here he paused, and looked around and above. It was the very height of

summer. The sun was just rising over gentle sloping uplands. All the

dews on the hedgerows sparkled. There was not a cloud in the heavens. Up

rose from the green blades of corn a solitary skylark. His voice woke up

the other birds. A few minutes more and the joyous concert began.

Kenelm reverently doffed his hat, and bowed his head in mute homage and

thanksgiving.