I rode home on a horse my host lent me; and Lord Castleton rode
part of the way with me, accompanied by his two boys, who bestrode
manfully their Shetland ponies, and cantered on before us. I paid
some compliment to the spirit and intelligence of these children--a
compliment they well deserved.
"Why, yes," said the marquis, with a father's becoming pride, "I hope
neither of them will shame his grandsire, Trevanion. Albert (though not
quite the wonder poor Lady Ulverstone declares him to be) is rather
too precocious; and it is all I can do to prevent his being spoilt
by flattery to his cleverness, which, I think, is much worse than
even flattery to rank--a danger to which, despite Albert's destined
inheritance, the elder brother is more exposed. Eton soon takes out the
conceit of the latter and more vulgar kind. I remember Lord----(you
know what an unpretending good-natured fellow he is now) strutting into
the play-ground, a raw boy with his chin up in the air, and burly Dick
Johnson (rather a tuft-hunter now, I'm afraid) coming up, and saying,
'Well, sir, and who the deuce are you?' 'Lord----,' says the poor
devil unconsciously, 'eldest son of the Marquis of----.' 'Oh, indeed!'
cries Johnson; 'then, there's one kick for my lord, and two for the
marquis!' I am not fond of kicking, but I doubt if anything ever did
---- more good than those those kicks! But" continued Lord Castleton,
"when one flatters a boy for his cleverness, even Eton itself cannot
kick the conceit out of him. Let him be last in the form, and the
greatest dunce ever flogged, there are always people to say that your
public schools don't do for your great geniuses. And it is ten to one
but what the father is plagued into taking the boy home, and giving
him a private tutor, who fixes him into a prig for ever. A coxcomb in
dress," said the marquis smiling, "is a trifler it would ill become
me to condemn, and I own that I would rather see a youth a fop than
a sloven; but a coxcomb in ideas--why, the younger he is, the more
unnatural and disagreeable. Now, Albert, over that hedge, sir."
"That hedge, papa? The pony will never do it."
"Then," said Lord Castleton, taking off his hat with politeness, "I
fear you will deprive us of the pleasure of your company."
The boy laughed, and made gallantly for the hedge, though I saw by his
change of colour that it a little alarmed him. The pony could not clear
the hedge; but it was a pony of tact and resources, and it scrambled
through like a cat, inflicting sundry rents and tears on a jacket of
Raphael blue.
Lord Castleton said, smiling, "You see I teach them to get through
a difficulty one way or the other. Between you and me," he added
seriously, "I perceive a very different world rising round the next
generation from that in which I first went forth and took my pleasure.
I shall rear my boys accordingly. Rich noblemen must now-a-days be
useful men; and if they can't leap over briars, they must scramble
through them. Don't you agree with me?"
"Yes, heartily."
"Marriage makes a man much wiser," said the marquis, after a pause. "I
smile now, to think how often I sighed at the thought of growing old.
Now I reconcile myself to the gray hairs without dreams of a wig, and
enjoy youth still--for" (pointing to his sons) "it is _there_!"
"He has very nearly found out the secret of the saffron bag now," said
my father, pleased, and rubbing his hands, when I repeated this talk
with Lord Castleton. "But I fear poor Trevanion," he added, with a
compassionate change of countenance, "is still far away from the sense
of Lord Bacon's receipt. And his wife, you say, out of very love for
him, keeps always drawing discord from the one jarring wire."
"You must talk to her, sir."
"I will," said my father angrily; "and scold her too--foolish woman! I
shall tell her Luther's advice to the Prince of Anhalt."
"What was that, sir?"
"Only to throw a baby into the river Maldon, because it had sucked dry
five wet-nurses besides the mother, and must therefore be a changeling.
Why, that ambition of hers would suck dry all the mothers' milk in the
genus mammalian! And such a withered, rickety, malign little changeling
too! She shall fling it into the river, by all that is holy!" cried my
father; and, suiting the action to the word, away went the spectacles
he had been rubbing indignantly for the last three minutes, into the
pond. "Papæ!" faltered my father aghast, while the Ceprinidæ, mistaking
the dip of the spectacles for an invitation to dinner, came scudding
up to the bank. "It is all your fault," said Mr Caxton, recovering
himself. "Get me the new tortoise-shell spectacles and a large slice
of bread. You see that when fish are reduced to a pond they recognise
a benefactor, which they never do when rising at flies, or groping for
worms, in the waste world of a river. Hem!--a hint for the Ulverstones.
Besides the bread and the spectacles, just look out and bring me the
old black-letter copy of St Anthony's _Sermon to Fishes_."