THE HOPE OF ENGLAND.
MY uncle drove for some time in silence, but I was conscious that his eye
was always coming round to me, and I had an uneasy conviction that he was
already beginning to ask himself whether he could make anything of me, or
whether he had been betrayed into an indiscretion when he had allowed his
sister to persuade him to show her son something of the grand world in
which he lived.
“You sing, don’t you, nephew?” he asked, suddenly.
“Yes, sir, a little.”
“A baritone, I should fancy?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And your mother tells me that you play the fiddle. These things will be
of service to you with the Prince. Music runs in his family. Your
education has been what you could get at a village school. Well, you are
not examined in Greek roots in polite society, which is lucky for some of
us. It is as well just to have a tag or two of Horace or Virgil: ‘sub
tegmine fagi,’ or ‘habet fœnum in cornu,’ which gives a flavour to one’s
conversation like the touch of garlic in a salad. It is not _bon ton_ to
be learned, but it is a graceful thing to indicate that you have
forgotten a good deal. Can you write verse?”
“I fear not, sir.”
“A small book of rhymes may be had for half a crown. Vers de Société are
a great assistance to a young man. If you have the ladies on your side,
it does not matter whom you have against you. You must learn to open a
door, to enter a room, to present a snuff-box, raising the lid with the
forefinger of the hand in which you hold it. You must acquire the bow
for a man, with its necessary touch of dignity, and that for a lady,
which cannot be too humble, and should still contain the least suspicion
of abandon. You must cultivate a manner with women which shall be
deprecating and yet audacious. Have you any eccentricity?”
It made me laugh, the easy way in which he asked the question, as if it
were a most natural thing to possess.
“You have a pleasant, catching laugh, at all events,” said he. “But an
eccentricity is very _bon ton_ at present, and if you feel any leaning
towards one, I should certainly advise you to let it run its course.
Petersham would have remained a mere peer all his life had it not come
out that he had a snuff-box for every day in the year, and that he had
caught cold through a mistake of his valet, who sent him out on a bitter
winter day with a thin Sèvres china box instead of a thick tortoiseshell.
That brought him out of the ruck, you see, and people remember him. Even
some small characteristic, such as having an apricot tart on your
sideboard all the year round, or putting your candle out at night by
stuffing it under your pillow, serves to separate you from your
neighbour. In my own case, it is my precise judgment upon matter of
dress and decorum which has placed me where I am. I do not profess to
follow a law. I set one. For example, I am taking you to-day to see the
Prince in a nankeen vest. What do you think will be the consequence of
that?”
My fears told me that it might be my own very great discomfiture, but I
did not say so.
“Why, the night coach will carry the news to London. It will be in
Brookes’s and White’s to-morrow morning. Within, a week St. James’s
Street and the Mall will be full of nankeen waistcoats. A most painful
incident happened to me once. My cravat came undone in the street, and I
actually walked from Carlton House to Watier’s in Bruton Street with the
two ends hanging loose. Do you suppose it shook my position? The same
evening there were dozens of young bloods walking the streets of London
with their cravats loose. If I had not rearranged mine there would not
be one tied in the whole kingdom now, and a great art would have been
prematurely lost. You have not yet began to practise it?”
I confessed that I had not.
“You should begin now in your youth. I will myself teach you the _coup
d’archet_. By using a few hours in each day, which would otherwise be
wasted, you may hope to have excellent cravats in middle life. The whole
knack lies in pointing your chin to the sky, and then arranging your
folds by the gradual descent of your lower jaw.”
When my uncle spoke like this there was always that dancing, mischievous
light in his dark blue eyes, which showed me that this humour of his was
a conscious eccentricity, depending, as I believe, upon a natural
fastidiousness of taste, but wilfully driven to grotesque lengths for the
very reason which made him recommend me also to develop some peculiarity
of my own. When I thought of the way in which he had spoken of his
unhappy friend, Lord Avon, upon the evening before, and of the emotion
which he showed as he told the horrible story, I was glad to think that
there was the heart of a man there, however much it might please him to
conceal it.
And, as it happened, I was very soon to have another peep at it, for a
most unexpected event befell us as we drew up in front of the Crown
hotel. A swarm of ostlers and grooms had rushed out to us, and my uncle,
throwing down the reins, gathered Fidelio on his cushion from under the
seat.
“Ambrose,” he cried, “you may take Fidelio.”
But there came no answer. The seat behind was unoccupied. Ambrose was
gone.
We could hardly believe our eyes when we alighted and found that it was
really so. He had most certainly taken his seat there at Friar’s Oak,
and from there on we had come without a break as fast as the mares could
travel. Whither, then, could he have vanished to?
“He’s fallen off in a fit!” cried my uncle. “I’d drive back, but the
Prince is expecting us. Where’s the landlord? Here, Coppinger, send
your best man back to Friar’s Oak as fast as his horse can go, to find
news of my valet, Ambrose. See that no pains be spared. Now, nephew, we
shall lunch, and then go up to the Pavilion.”
My uncle was much disturbed by the strange loss of his valet, the more so
as it was his custom to go through a whole series of washings and
changings after even the shortest journey. For my own part, mindful of
my mother’s advice, I carefully brushed the dust from my clothes and made
myself as neat as possible. My heart was down in the soles of my little
silver-buckled shoes now that I had the immediate prospect of meeting so
great and terrible a person as the Prince of Wales. I had seen his
flaring yellow barouche flying through Friar’s Oak many a time, and had
halloaed and waved my hat with the others as it passed, but never in my
wildest dreams had it entered my head that I should ever be called upon
to look him in the face and answer his questions. My mother had taught
me to regard him with reverence, as one of those whom God had placed to
rule over us; but my uncle smiled when I told him of her teaching.
“You are old enough to see things as they are, nephew,” said he, “and
your knowledge of them is the badge that you are in that inner circle
where I mean to place you. There is no one who knows the Prince better
than I do, and there is no one who trusts him less. A stranger
contradiction of qualities was never gathered under one hat. He is a man
who is always in a hurry, and yet has never anything to do. He fusses
about things with which he has no concern, and he neglects every obvious
duty. He is generous to those who have no claim upon him, but he has
ruined his tradesmen by refusing to pay his just debts. He is
affectionate to casual acquaintances, but he dislikes his father, loathes
his mother, and is not on speaking terms with his wife. He claims to be
the first gentleman of England, but the gentlemen of England have
responded by blackballing his friends at their clubs, and by warning him
off from Newmarket under suspicion of having tampered with a horse. He
spends his days in uttering noble sentiments, and contradicting them by
ignoble actions. He tells stories of his own doings which are so
grotesque that they can only be explained by the madness which runs in
his blood. And yet, with all this, he can be courteous, dignified, and
kindly upon occasion, and I have seen an impulsive good-heartedness in
the man which has made me overlook faults which come mainly from his
being placed in a position which no one upon this earth was ever less
fitted to fill. But this is between ourselves, nephew; and now you will
come with me and you will form an opinion for yourself.”
It was but a short walk, and yet it took us some time, for my uncle
stalked along with great dignity, his lace-bordered handkerchief in one
hand, and his cane with the clouded amber head dangling from the other.
Every one that we met seemed to know him, and their hats flew from their
heads as we passed. He took little notice of these greetings, save to
give a nod to one, or to slightly raise his forefinger to another. It
chanced, however, that as we turned into the Pavilion Grounds, we met a
magnificent team of four coal-black horses, driven by a rough-looking,
middle-aged fellow in an old weather-stained cape. There was nothing
that I could see to distinguish him from any professional driver, save
that he was chatting very freely with a dainty little woman who was
perched on the box beside him.
“Halloa, Charlie! Good drive down?” he cried.
My uncle bowed and smiled to the lady.
“Broke it at Friar’s Oak,” said he. “I’ve my light curricle and two new
mares—half thorough-bred, half Cleveland bay.”
“What d’you think of my team of blacks?” asked the other.
“Yes, Sir Charles, what d’you think of them? Ain’t they damnation
smart?” cried the little woman.
“Plenty of power. Good horses for the Sussex clay. Too thick about the
fetlocks for me. I like to travel.”
“Travel!” cried the woman, with extraordinary vehemence. “Why, what
the—” and she broke into such language as I had never heard from a man’s
lips before. “We’d start with our swingle-bars touching, and we’d have
your dinner ordered, cooked, laid, and eaten before you were there to
claim it.”
“By George, yes, Letty is right!” cried the man. “D’you start
to-morrow?”
“Yes, Jack.”
“Well, I’ll make you an offer. Look ye here, Charlie! I’ll spring my
cattle from the Castle Square at quarter before nine. You can follow as
the clock strikes. I’ve double the horses and double the weight. If you
so much as see me before we cross Westminster Bridge, I’ll pay you a cool
hundred. If not, it’s my money—play or pay. Is it a match?”
“Very good,” said my uncle, and, raising his hat, he led the way into the
grounds. As I followed, I saw the woman take the reins, while the man
looked after us, and squirted a jet of tobacco-juice from between his
teeth in coachman fashion.
“That’s Sir John Lade,” said my uncle, “one of the richest men and best
whips in England. There isn’t a professional on the road that can handle
either his tongue or his ribbons better; but his wife, Lady Letty, is his
match with the one or the other.”
“It was dreadful to hear her,” said I.
“Oh, it’s her eccentricity. We all have them; and she amuses the Prince.
Now, nephew, keep close at my elbow, and have your eyes open and your
mouth shut.”
Two lines of magnificent red and gold footmen who guarded the door bowed
deeply as my uncle and I passed between them, he with his head in the air
and a manner as if he entered into his own, whilst I tried to look
assured, though my heart was beating thin and fast. Within there was a
high and large hall, ornamented with Eastern decorations, which
harmonized with the domes and minarets of the exterior. A number of
people were moving quietly about, forming into groups and whispering to
each other. One of these, a short, burly, red-faced man, full of fuss
and self-importance, came hurrying up to my uncle.
“I have de goot news, Sir Charles,” said he, sinking his voice as one who
speaks of weighty measures. “_Es ist vollendet_—dat is, I have it at
last thoroughly done.”
“Well, serve it hot,” said my uncle, coldly, “and see that the sauces are
a little better than when last I dined at Carlton House.”
“Ah, mine Gott, you tink I talk of de cuisine. It is de affair of de
Prince dat I speak of. Dat is one little _vol-au-vent_ dat is worth one
hundred tousand pound. Ten per cent., and double to be repaid when de
Royal pappa die. _Alles ist fertig_. Goldshmidt of de Hague have took
it up, and de Dutch public has subscribe de money.”
“God help the Dutch public!” muttered my uncle, as the fat little man
bustled off with his news to some new-comer. “That’s the Prince’s famous
cook, nephew. He has not his equal in England for a _filet sauté aux
champignons_. He manages his master’s money affairs.”
“The cook!” I exclaimed, in bewilderment.
“You look surprised, nephew.”
“I should have thought that some respectable banking firm—”
My uncle inclined his lips to my ear.
“No respectable house would touch them,” he whispered. “Ah, Mellish, is
the Prince within?”
“In the private saloon, Sir Charles,” said the gentleman addressed.
“Any one with him?”
“Sheridan and Francis. He said he expected you.”
“Then we shall go through.”
I followed him through the strangest succession of rooms, full of curious
barbaric splendour which impressed me as being very rich and wonderful,
though perhaps I should think differently now. Gold and scarlet in
arabesque designs gleamed upon the walls, with gilt dragons and monsters
writhing along cornices and out of corners. Look where I would, on panel
or ceiling, a score of mirrors flashed back the picture of the tall,
proud, white-faced man, and the youth who walked so demurely at his
elbow. Finally, a footman opened a door, and we found ourselves in the
Prince’s own private apartment.
Two gentlemen were lounging in a very easy fashion upon luxurious
fauteuils at the further end of the room and a third stood between them,
his thick, well-formed legs somewhat apart and his hands clasped behind
him. The sun was shining in upon them through a side-window, and I can
see the three faces now—one in the dusk, one in the light, and one cut
across by the shadow. Of those at the sides, I recall the reddish nose
and dark, flashing eyes of the one, and the hard, austere face of the
other, with the high coat-collars and many-wreathed cravats. These I
took in at a glance, but it was upon the man in the centre that my gaze
was fixed, for this I knew must be the Prince of Wales.
George was then in his forty-first year, and with the help of his tailor
and his hairdresser, he might have passed as somewhat less. The sight of
him put me at my ease, for he was a merry-looking man, handsome too in a
portly, full-blooded way, with laughing eyes and pouting, sensitive lips.
His nose was turned upwards, which increased the good-humoured effect of
his countenance at the expense of its dignity. His cheeks were pale and
sodden, like those of a man who lived too well and took too little
exercise. He was dressed in a single-breasted black coat buttoned up, a
pair of leather pantaloons stretched tightly across his broad thighs,
polished Hessian boots, and a huge white neckcloth.
“Halloa, Tregellis!” he cried, in the cheeriest fashion, as my uncle
crossed the threshold, and then suddenly the smile faded from his face,
and his eyes gleamed with resentment. “What the deuce is this?” he
shouted, angrily.
A thrill of fear passed through me as I thought that it was my appearance
which had produced this outburst. But his eyes were gazing past us, and
glancing round we saw that a man in a brown coat and scratch wig had
followed so closely at our heels, that the footmen had let him pass under
the impression that he was of our party. His face was very red, and the
folded blue paper which he carried in his hand shook and crackled in his
excitement.
“Why, it’s Vuillamy, the furniture man,” cried the Prince. “What, am I
to be dunned in my own private room? Where’s Mellish? Where’s
Townshend? What the deuce is Tom Tring doing?”
“I wouldn’t have intruded, your Royal Highness, but I must have the
money—or even a thousand on account would do.”
“Must have it, must you, Vuillamy? That’s a fine word to use. I pay my
debts in my own time, and I’m not to be bullied. Turn him out, footman!
Take him away!”
“If I don’t get it by Monday, I shall be in your papa’s Bench,” wailed
the little man, and as the footman led him out we could hear him, amidst
shouts of laughter, still protesting that he would wind up in “papa’s
Bench.”
“That’s the very place for a furniture man,” said the man with the red
nose.
“It should be the longest bench in the world, Sherry,” answered the
Prince, “for a good many of his subjects will want seats on it. Very
glad to see you back, Tregellis, but you must really be more careful what
you bring in upon your skirts. It was only yesterday that we had an
infernal Dutchman here howling about some arrears of interest and the
deuce knows what. ‘My good fellow,’ said I, ‘as long as the Commons
starve me, I have to starve you,’ and so the matter ended.”
“I think, sir, that the Commons would respond now if the matter were
fairly put before them by Charlie Fox or myself,” said Sheridan.
The Prince burst out against the Commons with an energy of hatred that
one would scarce expect from that chubby, good-humoured face.
“Why, curse them!” he cried. “After all their preaching and throwing my
father’s model life, as they called it, in my teeth, they had to pay
_his_ debts to the tune of nearly a million, whilst I can’t get a hundred
thousand out of them. And look at all they’ve done for my brothers!
York is Commander-in-Chief. Clarence is Admiral. What am I? Colonel of
a damned dragoon regiment under the orders of my own younger brother.
It’s my mother that’s at the bottom of it all. She always tried to hold
me back. But what’s this you’ve brought, Tregellis, eh?”
My uncle put his hand on my sleeve and led me forward.
“This is my sister’s son, sir; Rodney Stone by name,” said he. “He is
coming with me to London, and I thought it right to begin by presenting
him to your Royal Highness.”
“Quite right! Quite right!” said the Prince, with a good-natured smile,
patting me in a friendly way upon the shoulder. “Is your mother living?”
“Yes, sir,” said I.
“If you are a good son to her you will never go wrong. And, mark my
words, Mr. Rodney Stone, you should honour the King, love your country,
and uphold the glorious British Constitution.”
When I thought of the energy with which he had just been cursing the
House of Commons, I could scarce keep from smiling, and I saw Sheridan
put his hand up to his lips.
“You have only to do this, to show a regard for your word, and to keep
out of debt in order to insure a happy and respected life. What is your
father, Mr. Stone? Royal Navy! Well, it is a glorious service. I have
had a touch of it myself. Did I ever tell you how we laid aboard the
French sloop of war _Minerve_—hey, Tregellis?”
“No, sir,” said my uncle. Sheridan and Francis exchanged glances behind
the Prince’s back.
“She was flying her tricolour out there within sight of my pavilion
windows. Never saw such monstrous impudence in my life! It would take a
man of less mettle than me to stand it. Out I went in my little
cock-boat—you know my sixty-ton yawl, Charlie?—with two four-pounders on
each side, and a six-pounder in the bows.”
“Well, sir! Well, sir! And what then, sir?” cried Francis, who appeared
to be an irascible, rough-tongued man.
“You will permit me to tell the story in my own way, Sir Philip,” said
the Prince, with dignity. “I was about to say that our metal was so
light that I give you my word, gentlemen, that I carried my port
broadside in one coat pocket, and my starboard in the other. Up we came
to the big Frenchman, took her fire, and scraped the paint off her before
we let drive. But it was no use. By George, gentlemen, our balls just
stuck in her timbers like stones in a mud wall. She had her nettings up,
but we scrambled aboard, and at it we went hammer and anvil. It was a
sharp twenty minutes, but we beat her people down below, made the hatches
fast on them, and towed her into Seaham. Surely you were with us,
Sherry?”
“I was in London at the time,” said Sheridan, gravely.
“You can vouch for it, Francis!”
“I can vouch to having heard your Highness tell the story.”
“It was a rough little bit of cutlass and pistol work. But, for my own
part, I like the rapier. It’s a gentleman’s weapon. You heard of my
bout with the Chevalier d’Eon? I had him at my sword-point for forty
minutes at Angelo’s. He was one of the best blades in Europe, but I was
a little too supple in the wrist for him. ‘I thank God there was a
button on your Highness’s foil,’ said he, when we had finished our
breather. By the way, you’re a bit of a duellist yourself, Tregellis.
How often have you been out?”
“I used to go when I needed exercise,” said my uncle, carelessly. “But I
have taken to tennis now instead. A painful incident happened the last
time that I was out, and it sickened me of it.”
“You killed your man—?”
“No, no, sir, it was worse than that. I had a coat that Weston has never
equalled. To say that it fitted me is not to express it. It _was_
me—like the hide on a horse. I’ve had sixty from him since, but he could
never approach it. The sit of the collar brought tears into my eyes,
sir, when first I saw it; and as to the waist—”
“But the duel, Tregellis!” cried the Prince.
“Well, sir, I wore it at the duel, like the thoughtless fool that I was.
It was Major Hunter, of the Guards, with whom I had had a little
_tracasserie_, because I hinted that he should not come into Brookes’s
smelling of the stables. I fired first, and missed. He fired, and I
shrieked in despair. ‘He’s hit! A surgeon! A surgeon!’ they cried. ‘A
tailor! A tailor!’ said I, for there was a double hole through the tails
of my masterpiece. No, it was past all repair. You may laugh, sir, but
I’ll never see the like of it again.”
I had seated myself on a settee in the corner, upon the Prince’s
invitation, and very glad I was to remain quiet and unnoticed, listening
to the talk of these men. It was all in the same extravagant vein,
garnished with many senseless oaths; but I observed this difference,
that, whereas my uncle and Sheridan had something of humour in their
exaggeration, Francis tended always to ill-nature, and the Prince to
self-glorification. Finally, the conversation turned to music—I am not
sure that my uncle did not artfully bring it there, and the Prince,
hearing from him of my tastes, would have it that I should then and there
sit down at the wonderful little piano, all inlaid with mother-of-pearl,
which stood in the corner, and play him the accompaniment to his song.
It was called, as I remember, “The Briton Conquers but to Save,” and he
rolled it out in a very fair bass voice, the others joining in the
chorus, and clapping vigorously when he finished.
“Bravo, Mr. Stone!” said he. “You have an excellent touch; and I know
what I am talking about when I speak of music. Cramer, of the Opera,
said only the other day that he had rather hand his bâton to me than to
any amateur in England. Halloa, it’s Charlie Fox, by all that’s
wonderful!”
He had run forward with much warmth, and was shaking the hand of a
singular-looking person who had just entered the room. The new-comer was
a stout, square-built man, plainly and almost carelessly dressed, with an
uncouth manner and a rolling gait. His age might have been something
over fifty, and his swarthy, harshly-featured face was already deeply
lined either by his years or by his excesses. I have never seen a
countenance in which the angel and the devil were more obviously wedded.
Above, was the high, broad forehead of the philosopher, with keen,
humorous eyes looking out from under thick, strong brows. Below, was the
heavy jowl of the sensualist curving in a broad crease over his cravat.
That brow was the brow of the public Charles Fox, the thinker, the
philanthropist, the man who rallied and led the Liberal party during the
twenty most hazardous years of its existence. That jaw was the jaw of
the private Charles Fox, the gambler, the libertine, the drunkard. Yet
to his sins he never added the crowning one of hypocrisy. His vices were
as open as his virtues. In some quaint freak of Nature, two spirits
seemed to have been joined in one body, and the same frame to contain the
best and the worst man of his age.
“I’ve run down from Chertsey, sir, just to shake you by the hand, and to
make sure that the Tories have not carried you off.”
“Hang it, Charlie, you know that I sink or swim with my friends! A Whig
I started, and a Whig I shall remain.”
I thought that I could read upon Fox’s dark face that he was by no means
so confident about the Prince’s principles.
“Pitt has been at you, sir, I understand?”
“Yes, confound him! I hate the sight of that sharp-pointed snout of his,
which he wants to be ever poking into my affairs. He and Addington have
been boggling about the debts again. Why, look ye, Charlie, if Pitt held
me in contempt he could not behave different.”
I gathered from the smile which flitted over Sheridan’s expressive face
that this was exactly what Pitt did do. But straightway they all plunged
into politics, varied by the drinking of sweet maraschino, which a
footman brought round upon a salver. The King, the Queen, the Lords, and
the Commons were each in succession cursed by the Prince, in spite of the
excellent advice which he had given me about the British Constitution.
“Why, they allow me so little that I can’t look after my own people.
There are a dozen annuities to old servants and the like, and it’s all I
can do to scrape the money together to pay them. However, my”—he pulled
himself up and coughed in a consequential way—“my financial agent has
arranged for a loan, repayable upon the King’s death. This liqueur isn’t
good for either of us, Charlie. We’re both getting monstrous stout.”
“I can’t get any exercise for the gout,” said Fox.
“I am blooded fifty ounces a month, but the more I take the more I make.
You wouldn’t think, to look at us, Tregellis, that we could do what we
have done. We’ve had some days and nights together, Charlie!”
Fox smiled and shook his head.
“You remember how we posted to Newmarket before the races. We took a
public coach, Tregellis, clapped the postillions into the rumble, and
jumped on to their places. Charlie rode the leader and I the wheeler.
One fellow wouldn’t let us through his turnpike, and Charlie hopped off
and had his coat off in a minute. The fellow thought he had to do with a
fighting man, and soon cleared the way for us.”
“By the way, sir, speaking of fighting men, I give a supper to the Fancy
at the Waggon and Horses on Friday next,” said my uncle. “If you should
chance to be in town, they would think it a great honour if you should
condescend to look in upon us.”
“I’ve not seen a fight since I saw Tom Tyne, the tailor, kill Earl
fourteen years ago. I swore off then, and you know me as a man of my
word, Tregellis. Of course, I’ve been at the ringside _incog._ many a
time, but never as the Prince of Wales.”
“We should be vastly honoured if you would come _incog._ to our supper,
sir.”
“Well, well, Sherry, make a note of it. We’ll be at Carlton House on
Friday. The Prince can’t come, you know, Tregellis, but you might
reserve a chair for the Earl of Chester.”
“Sir, we shall be proud to see the Earl of Chester there,” said my uncle.
“By the way, Tregellis,” said Fox, “there’s some rumour about your having
a sporting bet with Sir Lothian Hume. What’s the truth of it?”
“Only a small matter of a couple of thous to a thou, he giving the odds.
He has a fancy to this new Gloucester man, Crab Wilson, and I’m to find a
man to beat him. Anything under twenty or over thirty-five, at or about
thirteen stone.”
“You take Charlie Fox’s advice, then,” cried the Prince. “When it comes
to handicapping a horse, playing a hand, matching a cock, or picking a
man, he has the best judgment in England. Now, Charlie, whom have we
upon the list who can beat Crab Wilson, of Gloucester?”
I was amazed at the interest and knowledge which all these great people
showed about the ring, for they not only had the deeds of the principal
men of the time—Belcher, Mendoza, Jackson, or Dutch Sam—at their fingers’
ends, but there was no fighting man so obscure that they did not know the
details of his deeds and prospects. The old ones and then the young were
discussed—their weight, their gameness, their hitting power, and their
constitution. Who, as he saw Sheridan and Fox eagerly arguing as to
whether Caleb Baldwin, the Westminster costermonger, could hold his own
with Isaac Bittoon, the Jew, would have guessed that the one was the
deepest political philosopher in Europe, and that the other would be
remembered as the author of the wittiest comedy and of the finest speech
of his generation?
The name of Champion Harrison came very early into the discussion, and
Fox, who had a high idea of Crab Wilson’s powers, was of opinion that my
uncle’s only chance lay in the veteran taking the field again. “He may
be slow on his pins, but he fights with his head, and he hits like the
kick of a horse. When he finished Black Baruk the man flew across the
outer ring as well as the inner, and fell among the spectators. If he
isn’t absolutely stale, Tregellis, he is your best chance.”
My uncle shrugged his shoulders.
“If poor Avon were here we might do something with him, for he was
Harrison’s first patron, and the man was devoted to him. But his wife is
too strong for me. And now, sir, I must leave you, for I have had the
misfortune to-day to lose the best valet in England, and I must make
inquiry for him. I thank your Royal Highness for your kindness in
receiving my nephew in so gracious a fashion.”
“Till Friday, then,” said the Prince, holding out his hand. “I have to
go up to town in any case, for there is a poor devil of an East India
Company’s officer who has written to me in his distress. If I can raise
a few hundreds, I shall see him and set things right for him. Now, Mr.
Stone, you have your life before you, and I hope it will be one which
your uncle may be proud of. You will honour the King, and show respect
for the Constitution, Mr. Stone. And, hark ye, you will avoid debt, and
bear in mind that your honour is a sacred thing.”
So I carried away a last impression of his sensual, good-humoured face,
his high cravat, and his broad leather thighs. Again we passed the
strange rooms, the gilded monsters, and the gorgeous footmen, and it was
with relief that I found myself out in the open air once more, with the
broad blue sea in front of us, and the fresh evening breeze upon our
faces.