I
This is quite a simple story, but it is about a lord. The lord in
question was John Tiberius Vincent de Guy, second Viscount Paramour, and
he was wealthy beyond the dreams of avarice. He was, in fact, so wealthy
that Mr. Otto Kahn stood at attention when speaking to him and Mr. John
D. Rockefeller burnt his tongue with his hot milk at the mere mention of
his name. Of course, young Lord Paramour had not made the money himself;
he merely decorated it. His father, the late Watt A. Guy, will be
remembered as the inventor and promoter of the Paramour Safety Hairpin:
which, it has been said, has made a deeper impress on contemporary life
than any other invention except Beecham’s Pills. It was thought pretty
decent of the old man that, when one day as he lay on his death-bed the
Prime Minister dropped in to hand him a Viscounty, he instantly took as
his title the name which had made his millions, and died Lord Paramour;
in which choice some people of the meaner sort have professed to find a
particular aptness, for had not (they asked) the most famous
advertisement of the Hairpins, that one which has for more than a decade
been emblazoned in coloured lights across the eastern end of Piccadilly
Circus and has raised advertisement to the majesty of an
institution--had not those letters of fire beseeched: “Buy Paramour,
Lord of Hairpins. No Woman Should be Without”? Whereupon, to be sure, no
woman was.
Of young Lord Paramour it must be said that he was a gentleman of
spirit; the war found him no laggard; but he was not ambitious in the
arts of peace. It pained some of his most worthy friends to see with
what indomitable energy he pursued the professions of leisure and
luxury; that he used his immense fortune and unusual parts--which it has
always been the pleasure of worthy persons to discern in the immensely
rich--to no other advantage than the decorations of his various palaces
and castles, the lavish entertainment of his friends therein, and only
the most unthinking exercise of charity; but those nearest to him were
most of all displeased at his evasion of his duty to his line and to
society, for young Lord Paramour showed a strong disinclination to
marry. A pageant of young ladies of quality was passed before him in
review, but he either heeded them not or remarked, in a most amiable
manner, on the imperfections of line, carriage, and cosmetics which, he
said, were apparent in the most recent generation of young ladies. There
were not, of course, wanting a few ladies of determination to make a
formidable attack on his celibacy on behalf of their daughters; but
young Lord Paramour withstood them with what can only be called a
humiliating ease.