LORD HAMPSTEAD.
Lord Hampstead, though he would not go into Parliament or belong to
any London Club, or walk about the streets with a chimney-pot hat, or
perform any of his public functions as a young nobleman should do,
had, nevertheless, his own amusements and his own extravagances.
In the matter of money he was placed outside his father's
liberality,--who was himself inclined to be liberal enough,--by the
fact that he had inherited a considerable portion of his maternal
grandfather's fortune. It might almost be said truly of him that
money was no object to him. It was not that he did not often talk
about money and think about money. He was very prone to do so, saying
that money was the most important factor in the world's justices and
injustices. But he was so fortunately circumstanced as to be able
to leave money out of his own personal consideration, never being
driven by the want of it to deny himself anything, or tempted by a
superabundance to expenditure which did not otherwise approve itself
to him. To give 10_s._ or 20_s._ a bottle for wine because somebody
pretended that it was very fine, or £300 for a horse when one at a
£100 would do his work for him, was altogether below his philosophy.
By his father's lodge gate there ran an omnibus up to town which he
would often use, saying that an omnibus with company was better than
a private carriage with none. He was wont to be angry with himself
in that he employed a fashionable tailor, declaring that he incurred
unnecessary expense merely to save himself the trouble of going
elsewhere. In this, however, it may be thought that there was
something of pretence, as he was no doubt conscious of good looks,
and aware probably that a skilful tailor might add a grace.
In his amusements he affected two which are especially expensive.
He kept a yacht, in which he was accustomed to absent himself in
the summer and autumn, and he had a small hunting establishment in
Northamptonshire. Of the former little need be said here, as he spent
his time on board much alone, or with friends with whom we need
not follow him; but it may be said that everything about the _Free
Trader_ was done well,--for such was the name of the vessel. Though
he did not pay 10_s._ a bottle for his wine, he paid the best price
for sails and cordage, and hired a competent skipper to look after
himself and his boat. His hunting was done very much in the same
way,--unless it be that in his yachting he was given to be tranquil,
and in his hunting he was very fond of hard riding. At Gorse Hall, as
his cottage was called, he had all comforts, we may perhaps say much
of luxury, around him. It was indeed hardly more than a cottage,
having been an old farm-house, and lately converted to its present
purpose. There were no noble surroundings, no stately hall, no marble
staircases, no costly salon. You entered by a passage which deserved
no auguster name, on the right of which was the dining-room; on the
left a larger chamber, always called the drawing-room because of
the fashion of the name. Beyond that was a smaller retreat in which
the owner kept his books. Leading up from the end of the passage
there was a steep staircase, a remnant of the old farm-house, and
above them five bed-rooms, so that his lordship was limited to the
number of four guests. Behind this was the kitchen and the servants'
rooms--sufficient, but not more than sufficient, for such a house.
Here our young democrat kept half-a-dozen horses, all of them--as men
around were used to declare--fit to go, although they were said to
have been bought at not more than £100 each. It was supposed to be a
crotchet on the part of Lord Hampstead to assert that cheap things
were as good as dear, and there were some who believed that he did in
truth care as much for his horses as other people. It was certainly a
fact that he never would have but one out in a day, and he was wont
to declare that Smith took out his second horse chiefly that Jones
might know that he did so. Down here, at Gorse Hall, the Post Office
clerk had often been received as a visitor,--but not at Gorse Hall
had he ever seen Lady Frances.
This lord had peculiar ideas about hunting, in reference to sport in
general. It was supposed of him, and supposed truly, that no young
man in England was more devotedly attached to fox-hunting than
he,--and that in want of a fox he would ride after a stag, and in
want of a stag after a drag. If everything else failed he would go
home across the country, any friend accompanying him, or else alone.
Nevertheless, he entertained a vehement hostility against all other
sports.
Of racing he declared that it had become simply a way of making
money, and of all ways the least profitable to the world and the most
disreputable. He was never seen on a racecourse. But his enemies
declared of him, that though he loved riding he was no judge of an
animal's pace, and that he was afraid to bet lest he should lose his
money.
Against shooting he was still louder. If there was in his country any
tradition, any custom, any law hateful to him, it was such as had
reference to the preservation of game. The preservation of a fox, he
said, stood on a perfectly different basis. The fox was not preserved
by law, and when preserved was used for the advantage of all who
chose to be present at the amusement. One man in one day would shoot
fifty pheasants which had eaten up the food of half-a-dozen human
beings. One fox afforded in one day amusement to two hundred
sportsmen, and was--or more generally was not--killed during the
performance. And the fox during his beneficial life had eaten no
corn, nor for the most part geese,--but chiefly rats and such like.
What infinitesimal sum had the fox cost the country for every man who
rushed after him? Then, what had been the cost of all those pheasants
which one shooting cormorant crammed into his huge bag during one
day's greedy sport?
But it was the public nature of the one amusement and the thoroughly
private nature of the other which chiefly affected him. In the
hunting-field the farmer's son, if he had a pony, or the butcher-boy
out of the town, could come and take his part; and if the butcher-boy
could go ahead and keep his place while the man with a red coat and
pink boots and with two horses fell behind, the butcher-boy would
have the best of it, and incur the displeasure of no one. And the
laws, too, by which hunting is governed, if there be laws, are
thoroughly democratic in their nature. They are not, he said, made by
any Parliament, but are simply assented to on behalf of the common
need. It was simply in compliance with opinion that the lands of all
men are open to be ridden over by the men of the hunt. In compliance
with opinion foxes are preserved. In compliance with opinion coverts
are drawn by this or the other pack of hounds. The Legislature had
not stepped in to defile the statute book by bye-laws made in favour
of the amusements of the rich. If injury were done, the ordinary laws
of the country were open to the injured party. Anything in hunting
that had grown to be beyond the reach of the law had become so by the
force of popular opinion.
All of this was reversed in shooting, from any participation in which
the poor were debarred by enactments made solely on behalf of the
rich. Four or five men in a couple of days would offer up hecatombs
of slaughtered animals, in doing which they could only justify
themselves by the fact that they were acting as poultry-butchers for
the supply of the markets of the country. There was no excitement
in it,--simply the firing off of many guns with a rapidity which
altogether prevents that competition which is essential to
the enjoyment of sport. Then our noble Republican would quote
Teufelsdröckh and the memorable epitaph of the partridge-slayer. But
it was on the popular and unpopular elements of the two sports that
he would most strongly dilate, and on the iniquity of the game-laws
as applying to the more aristocratic of the two. It was, however,
asserted by the sporting world at large that Hampstead could not hit
a haystack.
As to fishing, he was almost equally violent, grounding his objection
on the tedium and cruelty incident to the pursuit. The first was only
a matter of taste, he would allow. If a man could content himself and
be happy with an average of one fish to every three days' fishing,
that was the man's affair. He could only think that in such case the
man himself must be as cold-blooded as the fish which he so seldom
succeeded in catching. As to the cruelty, he thought there could be
no doubt. When he heard that bishops and ladies delighted themselves
in hauling an unfortunate animal about by the gills for more than an
hour at a stretch, he was inclined to regret the past piety of the
Church and the past tenderness of the sex. When he spoke in this way
the cruelty of fox-hunting was of course thrown in his teeth. Did
not the poor hunted quadrupeds, when followed hither and thither by
a pack of fox-hounds, endure torments as sharp and as prolonged as
those inflicted on the fish? In answer to this Lord Hampstead was
eloquent and argumentative. As far as we could judge from Nature the
condition of the two animals during the process was very different.
The salmon with the hook in its throat was in a position certainly
not intended by Nature. The fox, using all its gifts to avoid an
enemy, was employed exactly as Nature had enjoined. It would be as
just to compare a human being impaled alive on a stake with another
overburdened with his world's task. The overburdened man might
stumble and fall, and so perish. Things would have been hard to
him. But not, therefore, could you compare his sufferings with the
excruciating agonies of the poor wretch who had been left to linger
and starve with an iron rod through his vitals. This argument was
thought to be crafty rather than cunning by those who were fond of
fishing. But he had another on which, when he had blown off the
steam of his eloquence by his sensational description of a salmon
impaled by a bishop, he could depend with greater confidence. He
would grant,--for the moment, though he was by no means sure of the
fact,--but for the moment he would grant that the fox did not enjoy
the hunt. Let it be acknowledged--for the sake of the argument--that
he was tortured by the hounds rather than elated by the triumphant
success of his own manoeuvres. Lord Hampstead "ventured to
say,"--this he would put forward in the rationalistic tone with which
he was wont to prove the absurdity of hereditary honours,--"that in
the infliction of all pain the question as to cruelty or no cruelty
was one of relative value." Was it "tanti?" Who can doubt that for
a certain maximum of good a certain minimum of suffering may be
inflicted without slur to humanity? In hunting, one fox was made to
finish his triumphant career, perhaps prematurely, for the advantage
of two hundred sportsmen. "Ah, but only for their amusement!" would
interpose some humanitarian averse equally to fishing and to hunting.
Then his lordship would arise indignantly and would ask his opponent,
whether what he called amusement was not as beneficial, as essential,
as necessary to the world as even such material good things as bread
and meat. Was poetry less valuable than the multiplication table?
Man could exist no doubt without fox-hunting. So he could without
butter, without wine, or other so-called necessaries;--without ermine
tippets, for instance, the original God-invested wearer of which had
been doomed to lingering starvation and death when trapped amidst the
snow, in order that one lady might be made fine by the agonies of a
dozen little furry sufferers. It was all a case of "tanti," he said,
and he said that the fox who had saved himself half-a-dozen times
and then died nobly on behalf of those who had been instrumental in
preserving an existence for him, ought not to complain of the lot
which Fate had provided for him among the animals of the earth. It
was said, however, in reference to this comparison between fishing
and fox-hunting, that Lord Hampstead was altogether deficient in that
skill and patience which is necessary for the landing of a salmon.
But men, though they laughed at him, still they liked him. He was
good-humoured and kindly-hearted. He was liberal in more than his
politics. He had, too, a knack of laughing at himself, and his own
peculiarities, which went far to redeem them. That a young Earl, an
embryo Marquis, the heir of such a house as that of Trafford, should
preach a political doctrine which those who heard ignorantly called
Communistic, was very dreadful; but the horror of it was mitigated
when he declared that no doubt as he got old he should turn Tory
like any other Radical. In this there seemed to be a covert allusion
to his father. And then they could perceive that his "Communistic"
principles did not prevent him from having a good eye to the value of
land. He knew what he was about, as an owner of property should do,
and certainly rode to hounds as well as any one of the boys of the
period.
When the idea first presented itself to him that his sister was on
the way to fall in love with George Roden, it has to be acknowledged
that he was displeased. It had not occurred to him that this peculiar
breach would be made on the protected sanctity of his own family.
When Roden had spoken to him of this sanctity as one of the "social
idolatries," he had not quite been able to contradict him. He had
wished to do so both in defence of his own consistency, and also,
if it were possible, so as to maintain the sanctity. The "divinity"
which "does hedge a king," had been to him no more than a social
idolatry. The special respect in which dukes and such like were
held was the same. The judge's ermine and the bishop's apron were
idolatries. Any outward honour, not earned by the deeds or words of
him so honoured, but coming from birth, wealth, or from the doings
of another, was an idolatry. Carrying on his arguments, he could not
admit the same thing in reference to his sister;--or rather, he would
have to admit it if he could not make another plea in defence of
the sanctity. His sister was very holy to him;--but that should be
because of her nearness to him, because of her sweetness, because
of her own gifts, because as her brother he was bound to be her
especial knight till she should have chosen some other special knight
for herself. But it should not be because she was the daughter,
granddaughter, and great-granddaughter of dukes and marquises. It
should not be because she was Lady Frances Trafford. Had he himself
been a Post Office clerk, then would not this chosen friend have been
fit to love her? There were unfitnesses, no doubt, very common in
this world, which should make the very idea of love impossible to a
woman,--unfitness of character, of habits, of feelings, of education,
unfitnesses as to inward personal nobility. He could not say that
there were any such which ought to separate his sister and his
friend. If it was to be that this sweet sister should some day give
her heart to a lover, why not to George Roden as well as to another?
There were no such unfitnesses as those of which he would have
thought in dealing with the lives of some other girl and some other
young man.
And yet he was, if not displeased, at any rate dissatisfied.
There was something which grated against either his taste, or his
judgment,--or perhaps his prejudices. He endeavoured to inquire into
himself fairly on this matter, and feared that he was yet the victim
of the prejudices of his order. He was wounded in his pride to think
that his sister should make herself equal to a clerk in the Post
Office. Though he had often endeavoured, only too successfully, to
make her understand how little she had in truth received from her
high birth, yet he felt that she had received something which should
have made the proposal of such a marriage distasteful to her. A man
cannot rid himself of a prejudice because he knows or believes it
to be a prejudice. That the two, if they continued to wish it, must
become man and wife he acknowledged to himself;--but he could not
bring himself not to be sorry that it should be so.
There were some words on the subject between himself and his father
before the Marquis went abroad with his family, which, though they
did not reconcile him to the match, lessened the dissatisfaction. His
father was angry with him, throwing the blame of this untoward affair
on his head, and he was always prone to resent censure thrown by any
of his family on his own peculiar tenets. Thus it came to pass that
in defending himself he was driven to defend his sister also. The
Marquis had not been at Hendon when the revelation was first made,
but had heard it in the course of the day from his wife. His Radical
tendencies had done very little towards reconciling him to such
a proposal. He had never brought his theories home into his own
personalities. To be a Radical peer in the House of Lords, and to
have sent a Radical tailor to the House of Commons, had been enough,
if not too much, to satisfy his own political ideas. To himself and
to his valet, to all those immediately touching himself, he had
always been the Marquis of Kingsbury. And so also, in his inner
heart, the Marchioness was the Marchioness, and Lady Frances Lady
Frances. He had never gone through any process of realizing his
convictions as his son had done. "Hampstead," he said, "can this
possibly be true what your mother has told me?" This took place at
the house in Park Lane, to which the Marquis had summoned his son.
"Do you mean about Frances and George Roden?"
"Of course I mean that."
"I supposed you did, sir. I imagined that when you sent for me it was
in regard to them. No doubt it is true."
"What is true? You speak as though you absolutely approved it."
"Then my voice has belied me, for I disapprove of it."
"You feel, I hope, how utterly impossible it is."
"Not that."
"Not that?"
"I cannot say that I think it to be impossible,--or even improbable.
Knowing the two, as I do, I feel the probability to be on their
side."
"That they--should be married?"
"That is what they intend. I never knew either of them to mean
anything which did not sooner or later get itself accomplished."
"You'll have to learn it on this occasion. How on earth can it have
been brought about?" Lord Hampstead shrugged his shoulders. "Somebody
has been very much to blame."
"You mean me, sir?"
"Somebody has been very much to blame."
"Of course, you mean me. I cannot take any blame in the matter. In
introducing George Roden to you, and to my mother, and to Frances,
I brought you to the knowledge of a highly-educated and extremely
well-mannered young man."
"Good God!"
"I did to my friend what every young man, I suppose, does to his. I
should be ashamed of myself to associate with any one who was not a
proper guest for my father's table. One does not calculate before
that a young man and a young woman shall fall in love with each
other."
"You see what has happened."
"It was extremely natural, no doubt,--though I had not anticipated
it. As I told you, I am very sorry. It will cause many heartburns,
and some unhappiness."
"Unhappiness! I should think so. I must go away,--in the middle of
the Session."
"It will be worse for her, poor girl."
"It will be very bad for her," said the Marquis, speaking as though
his mind were quite made up on that matter.
"But nobody, as far as I can see, has done anything wrong," continued
Lord Hampstead. "When two young people get together whose tastes are
similar, and opinions,--whose educations and habits of thought have
been the same--"
"Habits the same!"
"Habits of thought, I said, sir."
"You would talk the hind legs off a dog," said the Marquis, bouncing
out of the room. It was not unusual with him, in the absolute privacy
of his own circle, to revert to language which he would have felt to
be unbecoming to him as Marquis of Kingsbury among ordinary people.