The father of Mr. Ferrars had the reputation of being the son of a once
somewhat celebrated statesman, but the only patrimony he inherited from
his presumed parent was a clerkship in the Treasury, where he
found himself drudging at an early age. Nature had endowed him with
considerable abilities, and peculiarly adapted to the scene of their
display. It was difficult to decide which was most remarkable, his
shrewdness or his capacity of labour. His quickness of perception and
mastery of details made him in a few years an authority in the office,
and a Secretary of the Treasury, who was quite ignorant of details,
but who was a good judge of human character, had the sense to appoint
Ferrars his private secretary. This happy preferment in time opened the
whole official world to one not only singularly qualified for that kind
of life, but who possessed the peculiar gifts that were then commencing
to be much in demand in those circles. We were then entering that era
of commercial and financial reform which had been, if not absolutely
occasioned, certainly precipitated, by the revolt of our colonies.
Knowledge of finance and acquaintance with tariffs were then rare gifts,
and before five years of his private secretaryship had expired, Ferrars
was mentioned to Mr. Pitt as the man at the Treasury who could do
something that the great minister required. This decided his lot. Mr.
Pitt found in Ferrars the instrument he wanted, and appreciating all his
qualities placed him in a position which afforded them full play. The
minister returned Ferrars to Parliament, for the Treasury then had
boroughs of its own, and the new member was preferred to an important
and laborious post. So long as Pitt and Grenville were in the ascendant,
Mr. Ferrars toiled and flourished. He was exactly the man they liked;
unwearied, vigilant, clear and cold; with a dash of natural sarcasm
developed by a sharp and varied experience. He disappeared from the
active world in the latter years of the Liverpool reign, when a newer
generation and more bustling ideas successfully asserted their
claims; but he retired with the solace of a sinecure, a pension, and
a privy-councillorship. The Cabinet he had never entered, nor dared to
hope to enter. It was the privilege of an inner circle even in our then
contracted public life. It was the dream of Ferrars to revenge in
this respect his fate in the person of his son, and only child. He
was resolved that his offspring should enjoy all those advantages
of education and breeding and society of which he himself had been
deprived. For him was to be reserved a full initiation in those costly
ceremonies which, under the names of Eton and Christ Church, in his time
fascinated and dazzled mankind. His son, William Pitt Ferrars, realised
even more than his father’s hopes. Extremely good-looking, he was gifted
with a precocity of talent. He was the marvel of Eton and the hope
of Oxford. As a boy, his Latin verses threw enraptured tutors into
paroxysms of praise, while debating societies hailed with acclamation
clearly another heaven-born minister. He went up to Oxford about the
time that the examinations were reformed and rendered really efficient.
This only increased his renown, for the name of Ferrars figured among
the earliest double-firsts. Those were days when a crack university
reputation often opened the doors of the House of Commons to a young
aspirant; at least, after a season. But Ferrars had not to wait. His
father, who watched his career with the passionate interest with which a
Newmarket man watches the development of some gifted yearling, took care
that all the odds should be in his favour in the race of life. An old
colleague of the elder Mr. Ferrars, a worthy peer with many boroughs,
placed a seat at the disposal of the youthful hero, the moment he was
prepared to accept it, and he might be said to have left the University
only to enter the House of Commons.
There, if his career had not yet realised the dreams of his youthful
admirers, it had at least been one of progress and unbroken prosperity.
His first speech was successful, though florid, but it was on foreign
affairs, which permit rhetoric, and in those days demanded at least
one Virgilian quotation. In this latter branch of oratorical adornment
Ferrars was never deficient. No young man of that time, and scarcely any
old one, ventured to address Mr. Speaker without being equipped with a
Latin passage. Ferrars, in this respect, was triply armed. Indeed, when
he entered public life, full of hope and promise, though disciplined to
a certain extent by his mathematical training, he had read very little
more than some Latin writers, some Greek plays, and some treatises of
Aristotle. These with a due course of Bampton Lectures and some dipping
into the “Quarterly Review,” then in its prime, qualified a man in
those days, not only for being a member of Parliament, but becoming a
candidate for the responsibility of statesmanship. Ferrars made his way;
for two years he was occasionally asked by the minister to speak, and
then Lord Castlereagh, who liked young men, made him a Lord of the
Treasury. He was Under-Secretary of State, and “very rising,” when the
death of Lord Liverpool brought about the severance of the Tory party,
and Mr. Ferrars, mainly under the advice of zealots, resigned his office
when Mr. Canning was appointed Minister, and cast in his lot with the
great destiny of the Duke of Wellington.
The elder Ferrars had the reputation of being wealthy. It was supposed
that he had enjoyed opportunities of making money, and had availed
himself of them, but this was not true. Though a cynic, and with little
respect for his fellow-creatures, Ferrars had a pride in official
purity, and when the Government was charged with venality and
corruption, he would observe, with a dry chuckle, that he had seen a
great deal of life, and that for his part he would not much trust any
man out of Downing Street. He had been unable to resist the temptation
of connecting his life with that of an individual of birth and rank;
and in a weak moment, perhaps his only one, he had given his son
a stepmother in a still good-looking and very expensive
Viscountess-Dowager.
Mr. Ferrars was anxious that his son should make a great alliance, but
he was so distracted between prudential considerations and his desire
that in the veins of his grand-children there should flow blood of
undoubted nobility, that he could never bring to his purpose that clear
and concentrated will which was one of the causes of his success in
life; and, in the midst of his perplexities, his son unexpectedly
settled the question himself. Though naturally cold and calculating,
William Ferrars, like most of us, had a vein of romance in his being,
and it asserted itself. There was a Miss Carey, who suddenly became
the beauty of the season. She was an orphan, and reputed to be no
inconsiderable heiress, and was introduced to the world by an aunt
who was a duchess, and who meant that her niece should be the same.
Everybody talked about them, and they went everywhere--among other
places to the House of Commons, where Miss Carey, spying the senators
from the old ventilator in the ceiling of St. Stephen’s Chapel, dropped
in her excitement her opera-glass, which fell at the feet of Mr.
Under-Secretary Ferrars. He hastened to restore it to its beautiful
owner, whom he found accompanied by several of his friends, and he was
not only thanked, but invited to remain with them; and the next day
he called, and he called very often afterwards, and many other things
happened, and at the end of July the beauty of the season was
married not to a Duke, but to a rising man, who Zenobia, who at first
disapproved of the match--for Zenobia never liked her male friends to
marry--was sure would one day be Prime Minister of England.
Mrs. Ferrars was of the same opinion as Zenobia, for she was ambitious,
and the dream was captivating. And Mrs. Ferrars soon gained Zenobia’s
good graces, for she had many charms, and, though haughty to the
multitude, was a first-rate flatterer. Zenobia liked flattery, and
always said she did. Mr. Under-Secretary Ferrars took a mansion in Hill
Street, and furnished it with befitting splendour. His dinners were
celebrated, and Mrs. Ferrars gave suppers after the opera. The equipages
of Mrs. Ferrars were distinguished, and they had a large retinue of
servants. They had only two children, and they were twins, a brother and
a sister, who were brought up like the children of princes. Partly for
them, and partly because a minister should have a Tusculum, the Ferrars
soon engaged a magnificent villa at Wimbledon, which had the advantage
of admirable stables, convenient, as Mrs. Ferrars was fond of horses,
and liked the children too, with their fancy ponies, to be early
accustomed to riding. All this occasioned expenditure, but old Mr.
Ferrars made his son a liberal allowance, and young Mrs. Ferrars was an
heiress, or the world thought so, which is nearly the same, and then,
too, young Mr. Ferrars was a rising man, in office, and who would
always be in office for the rest of his life; at least, Zenobia said so,
because he was on the right side and the Whigs were nowhere, and never
would be anywhere, which was quite right, as they had wished to make us
the slaves of Bonaparte.
When the King, after much hesitation, sent for Mr. Canning, on the
resignation of Lord Liverpool, the Zenobian theory seemed a little at
fault, and William Ferrars absolutely out of office had more than one
misgiving; but after some months of doubt and anxiety, it seemed after
all the great lady was right. The unexpected disappearance of Mr.
Canning from the scene, followed by the transient and embarrassed
phantom of Lord Goderich, seemed to indicate an inexorable destiny that
England should be ruled by the most eminent men of the age, and the most
illustrious of her citizens. William Ferrars, under the inspiration of
Zenobia, had thrown in his fortunes with the Duke, and after nine months
of disquietude found his due reward. In the January that succeeded the
August conversation in St. James’ Street with Sidney Wilton, William
Ferrars was sworn of the Privy Council, and held high office, on the
verge of the Cabinet.
Mr. Ferrars had a dinner party in Hill Street on the day he had returned
from Windsor with the seals of his new office. The catastrophe of the
Goderich Cabinet, almost on the eve of the meeting of Parliament, had
been so sudden, that, not anticipating such a state of affairs, Ferrars,
among his other guests, had invited Sidney Wilton. He was rather
regretting this when, as his carriage stopped at his own door, he
observed that very gentleman on his threshold.
Wilton greeted him warmly, and congratulated him on his promotion. “I
do so at once,” he added, “because I shall not have the opportunity
this evening. I was calling here in the hope of seeing Mrs. Ferrars, and
asking her to excuse me from being your guest to-day.”
“Well, it is rather awkward,” said Ferrars, “but I could have no idea of
this when you were so kind as to say you would come.”
“Oh, nothing of that sort,” said Sidney. “I am out and you are in, and
I hope you may be in for a long, long time. I dare say it may be so, and
the Duke is the man of the age, as you always said he was. I hope your
being in office is not to deprive me of your pleasant dinners; it would
be too bad to lose my place both at Whitehall and in Hill Street.”
“I trust that will never happen, my dear fellow; but to-day I thought it
might be embarrassing.”
“Not at all; I could endure without wincing even the triumphant glances
of Zenobia. The fact is, I have some business of the most pressing
nature which has suddenly arisen, and which demands my immediate
attention.”
Ferrars expressed his regret, though in fact he was greatly relieved,
and they parted.
Zenobia did dine with the William Ferrars to-day, and her handsome
husband came with her, a knight of the garter, and just appointed to a
high office in the household by the new government. Even the excitement
of the hour did not disturb his indigenous repose. It was a dignified
serenity, quite natural, and quite compatible with easy and even cordial
manners, and an address always considerate even when not sympathetic.
He was not a loud or a long talker, but his terse remarks were full
of taste and a just appreciation of things. If they were sometimes
trenchant, the blade was of fine temper. Old Mr. Ferrars was there and
the Viscountess Edgware. His hair had become quite silvered, and
his cheek rosy as a December apple. His hazel eyes twinkled with
satisfaction as he remembered the family had now produced two privy
councillors. Lord Pomeroy was there, the great lord who had returned
William Ferrars to Parliament, a little man, quite, shy, rather
insignificant in appearance, but who observed everybody and everything;
a conscientious man, who was always doing good, in silence and secrecy,
and denounced as a boroughmonger, had never sold a seat in his life, and
was always looking out for able men of character to introduce them to
public affairs. It was not a formal party, but had grown up in great
degree out of the circumstances of the moment. There were more men than
women, and all men in office or devoted supporters of the new ministry.
Mrs. Ferrars, without being a regular beauty, had a voluptuous face and
form. Her complexion was brilliant, with large and long-lashed eyes of
blue. Her mouth was certainly too large, but the pouting richness of her
lips and the splendour of her teeth baffled criticism. She was a woman
who was always gorgeously or fantastically attired.
“I never can understand,” would sometimes observe Zenobia’s husband to
his brilliant spouse, “how affairs are carried on in this world. Now we
have, my dear, fifty thousand per annum; and I do not see how Ferrars
can have much more than five; and yet he lives much as we do, perhaps
better. I know Gibson showed me a horse last week that I very much
wanted, but I would not give him two hundred guineas for it. I called
there to-day to look after it again, for it would have suited me
exactly, but I was told I was too late, and it was sold to Mrs.
Ferrars.”
“My dear, you know I do not understand money matters,” Zenobia said in
reply. “I never could; but you should remember that old Ferrars must be
very rich, and that William Ferrars is the most rising man of the day,
and is sure to be in the Cabinet before he is forty.”
Everybody had an appetite for dinner to-day, and the dinner was worthy
of the appetites. Zenobia’s husband declared to himself that he never
dined so well, though he gave his _chef_ 500 pounds a year, and old Lord
Pomeroy, who had not yet admitted French wines to his own table, seemed
quite abashed with the number of his wine-glasses and their various
colours, and, as he tasted one succulent dish after another, felt a
proud satisfaction in having introduced to public life so distinguished
a man as William Ferrars.
With the dessert, not without some ceremony, were introduced the two
most remarkable guests of the entertainment, and these were the twins;
children of singular beauty, and dressed, if possible, more fancifully
and brilliantly than their mamma. They resembled each other, and had the
same brilliant complexion, rich chestnut hair, delicately arched brows,
and dark blue eyes. Though only eight years of age, a most unchildlike
self-possession distinguished them. The expression of their countenances
was haughty, disdainful, and supercilious. Their beautiful features
seemed quite unimpassioned, and they moved as if they expected
everything to yield to them. The girl, whose long ringlets were braided
with pearls, was ushered to a seat next to her father, and, like her
brother, who was placed by Mrs. Ferrars, was soon engaged in negligently
tasting delicacies, while she seemed apparently unconscious of any one
being present, except when she replied to those who addressed her with a
stare and a haughty monosyllable. The boy, in a black velvet jacket
with large Spanish buttons of silver filagree, a shirt of lace, and a
waistcoat of white satin, replied with reserve, but some condescension,
to the good-natured but half-humorous inquiries of the husband of
Zenobia.
“And when do you go to school?” asked his lordship in a kind voice and
with a laughing eye.
“I shall go to Eton in two years,” replied the child without the
slightest emotion, and not withdrawing his attention from the grapes he
was tasting, or even looking at his inquirer, “and then I shall go to
Christ Church, and then I shall go into Parliament.”
“Myra,” said an intimate of the family, a handsome private secretary of
Mr. Ferrars, to the daughter of the house, as he supplied her plate with
some choicest delicacies, “I hope you have not forgotten your engagement
to me which you made at Wimbledon two years ago?”
“What engagement?” she haughtily inquired.
“To marry me.”
“I should not think of marrying any one who was not in the House of
Lords,” she replied, and she shot at him a glance of contempt.
The ladies rose. As they were ascending the stairs, one of them said to
Mrs. Ferrars, “Your son’s name is very pretty, but it is very uncommon,
is it not?”
“‘Tis a family name. The first Carey who bore it was a courtier of
Charles the First, and we have never since been without it. William
wanted our boy to be christened Pomeroy but I was always resolved, if I
ever had a son, that he should be named ENDYMION.”