The House of Vipont,--"/Majora canamus/."
The House of Vipont! Looking back through ages, it seems as if the House
of Vipont were one continuous living idiosyncrasy, having in its
progressive development a connected unity of thought and action, so that
through all the changes of its outward form it had been moved and guided
by the same single spirit,--"/Le roi est mort; vive le roi!/"--A Vipont
dies; live the Vipont! Despite its high-sounding Norman name, the House
of Vipont was no House at all for some generations after the Conquest.
The first Vipont who emerged from the obscurity of time was a rude
soldier of Gascon origin, in the reign of Henry II.,--one of the thousand
fighting-men who sailed from Milford Haven with the stout Earl of
Pembroke, on that strange expedition which ended in the conquest of
Ireland. This gallant man obtained large grants of land in that fertile
island; some Mac or some O'----- vanished, and the House of Vipont rose.
During the reign of Richard I., the House of Vipont, though recalled to
England (leaving its Irish acquisitions in charge of a fierce cadet, who
served as middleman), excused itself from the Crusade, and, by marriage
with a rich goldsmith's daughter, was enabled to lend moneys to those who
indulged in that exciting but costly pilgrimage. In the reign of John,
the House of Vipont foreclosed its mortgages on lands thus pledged, and
became possessed of a very fair property in England, as well as its fiefs
in the sister isle.
The House of Vipont took no part in the troublesome politics of that day.
Discreetly obscure, it attended to its own fortunes, and felt small
interest in Magna Charta. During the reigns of the Plantagenet Edwards,
who were great encouragers of mercantile adventure, the House of Vipont,
shunning Crecy, Bannockburn, and such profitless brawls, intermarried
with London traders, and got many a good thing out of the Genoese. In
the reign of Henry IV. the House of Vipont reaped the benefit of its
past forbearance and modesty. Now, for the first time, the Viponts
appear as belted knights; they have armorial bearings; they are
Lancasterian to the backbone; they are exceedingly indignant against
heretics; they burn the Lollards; they have places in the household of
Queen Joan, who was called a witch,--but a witch is a very good friend
when she wields a sceptre instead of a broomstick. And in proof of its
growing importance, the House of Vipont marries a daughter of the then
mighty House of Darrell. In the reign of Henry V., during the invasion
of France, the House of Vipont--being afraid of the dysentery which
carried off more brave fellows than the field of Agincourt--contrived to
be a minor. The Wars of the Roses puzzled the House of Vipont sadly.
But it went through that perilous ordeal with singular tact and success.
The manner in which it changed sides, each change safe, and most changes
lucrative, is beyond all praise.
On the whole, it preferred the Yorkists; it was impossible to be actively
Lancasterian with Henry VI. of Lancaster always in prison. And thus, at
the death of Edward IV., the House of Vipont was Baron Vipont of Vipont,
with twenty manors. Richard III. counted on the House of Vipont, when he
left London to meet Richmond at Bosworth: he counted without his host.
The House of Vipont became again intensely Lancasterian, and was amongst
the first to crowd round the litter in which Henry VII. entered the
metropolis. In that reign it married a relation of Empson's, did the
great House of Vipont! and as nobles of elder date had become scarce and
poor, Henry VII. was pleased to make the House of Vipont an Earl,--the
Earl of Montfort. In the reign of Henry VIII., instead of burning
Lollards, the House of Vipont was all for the Reformation: it obtained
the lands of two priories and one abbey. Gorged with that spoil, the
House of Vipont, like an anaconda in the process of digestion, slept
long. But no, it slept not. Though it kept itself still as a mouse
during the reign of Bloody Queen Mary (only letting it be known at Court
that the House of Vipont had strong papal leanings); though during the
reigns of Elizabeth and James it made no noise, the House of Vipont was
silently inflating its lungs and improving its constitution. Slept,
indeed! it was wide awake. Then it was that it began systematically its
grand policy of alliances; then was it sedulously grafting its olive
branches on the stems of those fruitful New Houses that had sprung up
with the Tudors; then, alive to the spirit of the day, provident of the
wants of the morrow, over the length and breadth of the land it wove the
interlacing network of useful cousinhood! Then, too, it began to build
palaces, to enclose parks; it travelled, too, a little, did the House of
Vipont! it visited Italy; it conceived a taste: a very elegant House
became the House of Vipont! And in James's reign, for the first time,
the House of Vipont got the Garter. The Civil Wars broke out: England
was rent asunder. Peer and knight took part with one side or the other.
The House of Vipont was again perplexed. Certainly at the commencement
it, was all for King Charles. But when King Charles took to fighting,
the House of Vipont shook its sagacious head, and went about, like Lord
Falkland, sighing, "Peace, peace!" Finally, it remembered its neglected
estates in Ireland: its duties called it thither. To Ireland it went,
discreetly sad, and, marrying a kinswoman of Lord Fauconberg,--the
connection least exposed to Fortune's caprice of all the alliances formed
by the Lord Protector's family,--it was safe when Cromwell visited
Ireland; and no less safe when Charles II. was restored to England.
During the reign of the merry monarch the House of Vipont was a courtier,
married a beauty, got the Garter again, and, for the first time, became
the fashion. Fashion began to be a power. In the reign of James II.
the House of Vipont again contrived to be a minor, who came of age just
in time to take the oaths of fealty to William and Mary. In case of
accidents, the House of Vipont kept on friendly terms with the exiled
Stuarts, but it wrote no letters, and got into no scrapes. It was not,
however, till the Government, under Sir Robert Walpole, established the
constitutional and parliamentary system which characterizes modern
freedom, that the puissance accumulated through successive centuries by
the House of Vipont became pre-eminently visible. By that time its lands
were vast; its wealth enormous; its parliamentary influence, as "a Great
House," was a part of the British Constitution. At this period, the
House of Vipont found it convenient to rend itself into two grand
divisions,--the peer's branch and the commoner's. The House of Commons
had become so important that it was necessary for the House of Vipont to
be represented there by a great commoner. Thus arose the family of Carr
Vipont. That division, owing to a marriage settlement favouring a
younger son by the heiress of the Carrs, carried off a good slice from
the estate of the earldom: /uno averso, non deficit alter/; the earldom
mourned, but replaced the loss by two wealthy wedlocks of its own; and
had long since seen cause to rejoice that its power in the Upper Chamber
was strengthened by such aid in the Lower. For, thanks to its
parliamentary influence, and the aid of the great commoner, in the reign
of George III. the House of Vipont became a Marquess. From that time to
the present day, the House of Vipont has gone on prospering and
progressive. It was to the aristocracy what the "Times" newspaper is to
the press. The same quick sympathy with public feeling, the same unity
of tone and purpose, the same adaptability, and something of the same
lofty tone of superiority to the petty interests of party. It may be
conceded that the House of Vipont was less brilliant than the "Times"
newspaper, but eloquence and wit, necessary to the duration of a
newspaper, were not necessary to that of the House of Vipont. Had they
been so, it would have had them.
The head of the House of Vipont rarely condescended to take office. With
a rent-roll loosely estimated at about L170,000 a year, it is beneath a
man to take from the public a paltry five or six thousand a year, and
undergo all the undignified abuse of popular assemblies, and "a ribald
press." But it was a matter of course that the House of Vipont should be
represented in any Cabinet that a constitutional monarch could be advised
to form. Since the time of Walpole, a Vipont was always in the service
of his country, except in those rare instances when the country was
infamously misgoverned. The cadets of the House, or the senior member of
the great commoner's branch of it, sacrificed their ease to fulfil that
duty. The Montfort marquesses in general were contented with situations
of honour in the household, as of Lord Steward, Lord Chamberlain, or
Master of the Horse, etc.,--not onerous dignities; and even these they
only deigned to accept on those special occasions when danger threatened
the star of Brunswick, and the sense of its exalted station forbade the
House of Vipont to leave its country in the dark.
Great Houses like that of Vipont assist the work of civilization by the
law of their existence. They are sure to have a spirited and wealthy
tenantry, to whom, if but for the sake of that popular character which
doubles political influence, they are liberal and kindly landlords.
Under their sway fens and sands become fertile; agricultural experiments
are tested on a large scale; cattle and sheep improve in breed; national
capital augments, and, springing beneath the ploughshare, circulates
indirectly to speed the ship and animate the loom. Had there been no
Woburn, no Holkham, no Montfort Court, England would be the poorer by
many a million. Our great Houses tend also to the refinement of national
taste; they have their show places, their picture galleries, their
beautiful grounds. The humblest drawing-rooms owe an elegance or
comfort, the smallest garden a flower or esculent, to the importations
which luxury borrowed from abroad, or the inventions it stimulated at
home, for the original benefits of great Houses. Having a fair share of
such merits, in common with other great Houses, the House of Vipont was
not without good qualities peculiar to itself. Precisely because it was
the most egotistical of Houses, filled with the sense of its own
identity, and guided by the instincts of its own conservation, it was a
very civil, good-natured House,--courteous, generous, hospitable; a House
(I mean the head of it, not of course all its subordinate members,
including even the august Lady Selina) that could bow graciously and
shake hands with you. Even if you had no vote yourself, you might have a
cousin who had a vote. And once admitted into the family, the House
adopted you; you had only to marry one of its remotest relations and the
House sent you a wedding present; and at every general election, invited
you to rally round your connection,--the Marquess. Therefore, next only
to the Established Church, the House of Vipont was that British
institution the roots of which were the most widely spread.
Now the Viponts had for long generations been an energetic race.
Whatever their defects, they had exhibited shrewdness and vigour. The
late Marquess (grandfather to the present) had been perhaps the ablest
(that is, done most for the House of Vipont) of them all. Of a grandiose
and superb mode of living; of a majestic deportment; of princely manners;
of a remarkable talent for the management of all business, whether
private or public; a perfect enthusiast for the House of Vipont, and
aided by a marchioness in all respects worthy of him,--he might be said
to be the culminating flower of the venerable stem. But the present
lord, succeeding to the title as a mere child, was a melancholy contrast,
not only to his grandsire, but to the general character of his
progenitors. Before his time, every Head of the House had done something
for it; even the most frivolous had contributed one had collected the
pictures, another the statues, a third the medals, a fourth had amassed
the famous Vipont library; while others had at least married heiresses,
or augmented, through ducal lines, the splendour of the interminable
cousinhood. The present Marquess was literally nil. The pith of the
Viponts was not in him. He looked well; he dressed well: if life were
only the dumb show of a tableau, he would have been a paragon of a
Marquess. But he was like the watches we give to little children, with a
pretty gilt dial-plate, and no works in them. He was thoroughly inert;
there was no winding him up: he could not manage his property; he could
not answer his letters,--very few of them could he even read through.
Politics did not interest him, nor literature, nor field-sports. He
shot, it is true, but mechanically; wondering, perhaps, why he did shoot.
He attended races, because the House of Vipont kept a racing stud. He
bet on his own horses, but if they lost showed no vexation. Admirers (no
Marquess of Montfort could be wholly without them) said, "What fine
temper! what good breeding!" it was nothing but constitutional apathy.
No one could call him a bad man: he was not a profligate, an oppressor, a
miser, a spendthrift; he would not have taken the trouble to be a bad man
on any account. Those who beheld his character at a distance would have
called him an exemplary man. The more conspicuous duties of his station
--subscriptions, charities, the maintenance of grand establishments, the
encouragement of the fine arts--were virtues admirably performed for him
by others. But the phlegm or nullity of his being was not, after all, so
complete as I have made it, perhaps, appear. He had one susceptibility
which is more common with women than with men,--the susceptibility to
pique. His /amour propre/ was unforgiving: pique that, and he could do a
rash thing, a foolish thing, a spiteful thing; pique that, and,
prodigious! the watch went! He had a rooted pique against his
marchioness. Apparently he had conceived this pique from the very first.
He showed it passively by supreme neglect; he showed it actively by
removing her from all the spheres of power which naturally fall to the
wife when the husband shuns the details of business. Evidently he had a
dread lest any one should say, "Lady Montfort influences my lord."
Accordingly, not only the management of his estates fell to Carr Vipont,
but even of his gardens, his household, his domestic arrangements. It
was Carr Vipont or Lady Selina who said to Lady Montfort, "Give a ball;"
"You should ask so and so to dinner;" "Montfort was much hurt to see the
old lawn at the Twickenham villa broken up by those new bosquets. True,
it is settled on you as a jointure-house, but for that very reason
Montfort is sensitive," etc. In fact, they were virtually as separated,
my lord and my lady, as if legally disunited, and as if Carr Vipont and
Lady Selina were trustees or intermediaries in any polite approach to
each other. But, on the other hand, it is fair to say that where Lady
Montfort's sphere of action did not interfere with her husband's plans,
habits, likings, dislikings, jealous apprehensions that she should be
supposed to have any ascendency over what exclusively belonged to himself
as /Roi faineant/ of the Viponts, she was left free as air. No attempt
at masculine control or conjugal advice. At her disposal was wealth
without stint, every luxury the soft could desire, every gewgaw the vain
could covet. Had her pin-money, which in itself was the revenue of an
ordinary peeress, failed to satisfy her wants; had she grown tired of
wearing the family diamonds, and coveted new gems from Golconda,--a
single word to Carr Vipont or Lady Selina would have been answered by a
carte blanche on the Bank of England. But Lady Montfort had the
misfortune not to be extravagant in her tastes. Strange to say, in the
world Lord Montfort's marriage was called a love-match; he had married a
portionless girl, daughter to one of his poorest and obscurest cousins,
against the uniform policy of the House of Vipont, which did all it could
for poor cousins except marrying them to its chief. But Lady Montfort's
conduct in these trying circumstances was admirable and rare. Few
affronts can humiliate us unless we resent them--and in vain. Lady
Montfort had that exquisite dignity which gives to submission the grace
of cheerful acquiescence. That in the gay world flatterers should gather
round a young wife so eminently beautiful, and so wholly left by her
husband to her own guidance, was inevitable. But at the very first
insinuated compliment or pathetic condolence, Lady Montfort, so meek in
her household, was haughty enough to have daunted Lovelace. She was thus
very early felt to be beyond temptation, and the boldest passed on, nor
presumed to tempt. She was unpopular; called "proud and freezing;" she
did not extend the influence of "The House;" she did not confirm its
fashion,--fashion which necessitates social ease, and which no rank, no
wealth, no virtue, can of themselves suffice to give. And this failure
on her part was a great offence in the eyes of the House of Vipont. "She
does absolutely nothing for us," said Lady Selina; but Lady Selina in her
heart was well pleased that to her in reality thus fell, almost without a
rival, the female representation, in the great world, of the Vipont
honours. Lady Selina was fashion itself.
Lady Montfort's social peculiarity was in the eagerness with which she
sought the society of persons who enjoyed a reputation for superior
intellect, whether statesmen, lawyers, authors, philosophers, artists.
Intellectual intercourse seemed as if it was her native atmosphere, from
which she was habitually banished, to which she returned with an
instinctive yearning and a new zest of life; yet was she called, even
here, nor seemingly without justice, capricious and unsteady in her
likings. These clever personages, after a little while, all seemed to
disappoint her expectations of them; she sought the acquaintance of each
with cordial earnestness; slid from the acquaintance with weary languor,
--never, after all, less alone than when alone.
And so wondrous lovely! Nothing so rare as beauty of the high type:
genius and beauty, indeed, are both rare; genius, which is the beauty of
the mind,-beauty, which is the gen ius of the body. But, of the two,
beauty is the rarer. All of us can count on our fingers some forty or
fifty persons of undoubted and illustrious genius, including those famous
in action, letters, art. But can any of us remember to have seen more
than four or five specimens of first-rate ideal beauty? Whosoever had
seen Lady Montfort would have ranked her amongst such four or five in his
recollection. There was in her face that lustrous dazzle to which the
Latin poet, perhaps, refers when he speaks of the--
"Nitor
Splendentis Pario marmore purius . . .
Et voltus, niminm lubricus adspici,"
and which an English poet, with the less sensuous but more spiritual
imagination of northern genius, has described in lines that an English
reader may be pleased to see rescued from oblivion,--
"Her face was like the milky way i' the sky,
A meeting of gentle lights without a name."
(Suckling)
The eyes so purely bright, the exquisite harmony of colouring between the
dark (not too dark) hair and the ivory of the skin; such sweet radiance
in the lip when it broke into a smile. And it was said that in her
maiden day, before Caroline Lyndsay became Marchioness of Montfort, that
smile was the most joyous thing imaginable. Absurd now; you would not
think it, but that stately lady had been a wild, fanciful girl, with the
merriest laugh and the quickest tear, filling the air round her with
April sunshine. Certainly, no beings ever yet lived the life Nature
intended them to live, nor had fair play for heart and mind, who
contrived, by hook or by crook, to marry the wrong person!