The Duc de Chambertin-Pommard was a small but lively relic of a really
aristocratic family, the members of which were nearly all Atheists up to
the time of the French Revolution, but since that event (beneficial
in such various ways) had been very devout. He was a Royalist, a
Nationalist, and a perfectly sincere patriot in that particular style
which consists of ceaselessly asserting that one's country is not so
much in danger as already destroyed. He wrote cheery little articles for
the Royalist Press entitled “The End of France” or “The Last Cry,”
or what not, and he gave the final touches to a picture of the Kaiser
riding across a pavement of prostrate Parisians with a glow of patriotic
exultation. He was quite poor, and even his relations had no money. He
walked briskly to all his meals at a little open cafe, and he looked
just like everybody else.
Living in a country where aristocracy does not exist, he had a high
opinion of it. He would yearn for the swords and the stately manners of
the Pommards before the Revolution--most of whom had been (in theory)
Republicans. But he turned with a more practical eagerness to the one
country in Europe where the tricolour has never flown and men have never
been roughly equalized before the State. The beacon and comfort of
his life was England, which all Europe sees clearly as the one pure
aristocracy that remains. He had, moreover, a mild taste for sport and
kept an English bulldog, and he believed the English to be a race of
bulldogs, of heroic squires, and hearty yeomen vassals, because he read
all this in English Conservative papers, written by exhausted little
Levantine clerks. But his reading was naturally for the most part in the
French Conservative papers (though he knew English well), and it was in
these that he first heard of the horrible Budget. There he read of the
confiscatory revolution planned by the Lord Chancellor of the Exchequer,
the sinister Georges Lloyd. He also read how chivalrously Prince Arthur
Balfour of Burleigh had defied that demagogue, assisted by Austen the
Lord Chamberlain and the gay and witty Walter Lang. And being a brisk
partisan and a capable journalist, he decided to pay England a special
visit and report to his paper upon the struggle.
He drove for an eternity in an open fly through beautiful woods, with a
letter of introduction in his pocket to one duke, who was to introduce
him to another duke. The endless and numberless avenues of bewildering
pine woods gave him a queer feeling that he was driving through the
countless corridors of a dream. Yet the vast silence and freshness
healed his irritation at modern ugliness and unrest. It seemed a
background fit for the return of chivalry. In such a forest a king and
all his court might lose themselves hunting or a knight errant might
perish with no companion but God. The castle itself when he reached it
was somewhat smaller than he had expected, but he was delighted with
its romantic and castellated outline. He was just about to alight when
somebody opened two enormous gates at the side and the vehicle drove
briskly through.
“That is not the house?” he inquired politely of the driver.
“No, sir,” said the driver, controlling the corners of his mouth. “The
lodge, sir.”
“Indeed,” said the Duc de Chambertin-Pommard, “that is where the Duke's
land begins?”
“Oh no, sir,” said the man, quite in distress. “We've been in his
Grace's land all day.”
The Frenchman thanked him and leant back in the carriage, feeling as if
everything were incredibly huge and vast, like Gulliver in the country
of the Brobdingnags.
He got out in front of a long facade of a somewhat severe building, and
a little careless man in a shooting jacket and knickerbockers ran down
the steps. He had a weak, fair moustache and dull, blue, babyish eyes;
his features were insignificant, but his manner extremely pleasant
and hospitable, This was the Duke of Aylesbury, perhaps the largest
landowner in Europe, and known only as a horsebreeder until he began
to write abrupt little letters about the Budget. He led the French Duke
upstairs, talking trivialties in a hearty way, and there presented
him to another and more important English oligarch, who got up from a
writing-desk with a slightly senile jerk. He had a gleaming bald head
and glasses; the lower part of his face was masked with a short,
dark beard, which did not conceal a beaming smile, not unmixed with
sharpness. He stooped a little as he ran, like some sedentary head clerk
or cashier; and even without the cheque-book and papers on his desk
would have given the impression of a merchant or man of business. He was
dressed in a light grey check jacket. He was the Duke of Windsor, the
great Unionist statesman. Between these two loose, amiable men, the
little Gaul stood erect in his black frock coat, with the monstrous
gravity of French ceremonial good manners. This stiffness led the Duke
of Windsor to put him at his ease (like a tenant), and he said, rubbing
his hands:
“I was delighted with your letter... delighted. I shall be very pleased
if I can give you--er--any details.”
“My visit,” said the Frenchman, “scarcely suffices for the scientific
exhaustion of detail. I seek only the idea. The idea, that is always the
immediate thing.”
“Quite so,” said the other rapidly; “quite so... the idea.”
Feeling somehow that it was his turn (the English Duke having done all
that could be required of him) Pommard had to say: “I mean the idea
of aristocracy. I regard this as the last great battle for the idea.
Aristocracy, like any other thing, must justify itself to mankind.
Aristocracy is good because it preserves a picture of human dignity in
a world where that dignity is often obscured by servile necessities.
Aristocracy alone can keep a certain high reticence of soul and body, a
certain noble distance between the sexes.”
The Duke of Aylesbury, who had a clouded recollection of having squirted
soda-water down the neck of a Countess on the previous evening, looked
somewhat gloomy, as if lamenting the theoretic spirit of the Latin race.
The elder Duke laughed heartily, and said: “Well, well, you know; we
English are horribly practical. With us the great question is the land.
Out here in the country ... do you know this part?”
“Yes, yes,” cried the Frenchmen eagerly. “I See what you mean. The
country! the old rustic life of humanity! A holy war upon the bloated
and filthy towns. What right have these anarchists to attack your
busy and prosperous countrysides? Have they not thriven under your
management? Are not the English villages always growing larger and gayer
under the enthusiastic leadership of their encouraging squires? Have you
not the Maypole? Have you not Merry England?”
The Duke of Aylesbury made a noise in his throat, and then said very
indistinctly: “They all go to London.”
“All go to London?” repeated Pommard, with a blank stare. “Why?”
This time nobody answered, and Pommard had to attack again.
“The spirit of aristocracy is essentially opposed to the greed of the
industrial cities. Yet in France there are actually one or two nobles so
vile as to drive coal and gas trades, and drive them hard.” The Duke of
Windsor looked at the carpet. The Duke of Aylesbury went and looked
out of the window. At length the latter said: “That's rather stiff, you
know. One has to look after one's own business in town as well.”
“Do not say it,” cried the little Frenchman, starting up. “I tell you
all Europe is one fight between business and honour. If we do not fight
for honour, who will? What other right have we poor two-legged sinners
to titles and quartered shields except that we staggeringly support some
idea of giving things which cannot be demanded and avoiding things which
cannot be punished? Our only claim is to be a wall across Christendom
against the Jew pedlars and pawnbrokers, against the Goldsteins and
the--”
The Duke of Aylesbury swung round with his hands in his pockets.
“Oh, I say,” he said, “you've been readin' Lloyd George. Nobody but
dirty Radicals can say a word against Goldstein.”
“I certainly cannot permit,” said the elder Duke, rising rather shakily,
“the respected name of Lord Goldstein--”
He intended to be impressive, but there was something in the Frenchman's
eye that is not so easily impressed; there shone there that steel which
is the mind of France.
“Gentlemen,” he said, “I think I have all the details now. You have
ruled England for four hundred years. By your own account you have not
made the countryside endurable to men. By your own account you have
helped the victory of vulgarity and smoke. And by your own account you
are hand and glove with those very money-grubbers and adventurers whom
gentlemen have no other business but to keep at bay. I do not know what
your people will do; but my people would kill you.”
Some seconds afterwards he had left the Duke's house, and some hours
afterwards the Duke's estate.