DE BEAUVOIR CHANCERY SUIT: AND BELGRAVIA.
My lamented son, Henry de Beauvoir, active and athletic, was killed in
South Africa by the most unlikely accident of being jolted off the front
seat in a rutty road and crushed to death under the wheel of an
ox-waggon creeping at two miles an hour! This sad event occurred on May
31, 1871: and the newspapers at the time, both British and South
African, fully recorded not only the accident but the heroism of the
brave youth, the kind but unavailing assiduities of friends, and the
municipal honours accorded to him at his funeral, when the mayor and
council, the volunteers and chief inhabitants of King William's Town
(every window shuttered) followed him to the grave, where Archdeacon
Kitton read the solemn service; and some months after, a marble
headstone was placed over his remains. His two brothers have written
some touching stanzas to his memory: but they are private.
I mention all this sadness now by way of publicly acknowledging the
kindness of Archdeacon Kitton and, other friends at King William's Town,
not forgetting a most friendly officer of the American navy, from whom
we have received many excellent letters and presents from all round the
world, ever since he was among the first to break to us the death of my
son, now fifteen years ago: I desire, then, cordially to thank T.G. for
these kindnesses: as also Mr. Robertson, of Brechin, N.B., whose son
was Henry's African comrade, with him at the time of the catastrophe,
and following him to the grave.
Henry having been for good ancestral reasons christened de Beauvoir,
reminds me of a memorable matter of our family history which, as it is
on record, I will here relate. In the days of King James I. (to quote
with pedantic omissions from a pedigree), one Peter de Beauvoir,
descended from a younger branch of the ducal house of Rutland, had an
eldest son, James, whose daughter Rachel married Pierre Martin (my
spiritual sponsor after Martin Luther), and her daughter married a Carey
of Guernsey, whose descendant married my grandfather. Peter's second
son, Richard, married a Priaulx, also related to us, and her daughter
married a Benyon, in Charles II.'s time, whose descendant is now the
millionaire, Sir Richard Benyon de Beauvoir of Reading, &c. &c. Now,
this is the strange fact which has always puzzled me as well as others.
The old De Beauvoir was a very thrifty miser, and died two hundred years
ago possessed of great wealth, which has increased enormously up to our
day, seeing he had landed property in the north of London, now including
De Beauvoir Town.
In the second generation, his grand-daughters Rachel Martin of the elder
branch and Marie Priaulx of the younger, contended at law for the
inheritance after some intestacy: and a terrible lawsuit raged in
Chancery for 150 years, between the Tuppers and the Benyons,--and was
carried even to the House of Lords, being finally decided in my memory
for the Benyons. I remember my uncle saying he would not take thirty
thousand pounds for his individual chance,--but my less sanguine father
cared not to join in the lawsuit,--saying he would not "throw good
money after bad." For my own judgment, and I can speak as an old
conveyancing barrister (though without business or experience) of nearly
fifty years' standing, our side as the elder had the best right, though
the two sisters might well and wisely have shared in a compromise. But
somehow it came to be decided that the younger claimant of that vast
property must have _all_,--and the elder be strangely left out in the
cold. After the conclusion of the Lords, further litigation was
hopeless: so those whom I now represent (as almost the "last of the
Abruzzi") must acquiesce in getting nothing, while the opponent side has
the good luck to possess, as Dr. Johnson has it, "wealth beyond the
dreams of avarice." Such is life,--and law: the most obstinate and the
richest win: the less pertinacious and the poorer are allowed to fail:
it is a process of Darwin's survival of the fittest. All this is now
"too late to mend:" but I do hope that if ever I go to Engelfield
Castle, Sir Richard will be kindly and genial to his far-off cousin, who
(but for some legal quibble unknown) might have dispossessed him.
My father numbered among his patients the Duke of Rutland, and I have
heard him say that they half-humorously called each other cousins.
A Lost Chance in Belgravia.
In this connection of possible good luck that never happened, let me
record this.
Another of my father's patients was the long deceased Earl Grosvenor,
grandfather of the present Duke of Westminster; and about him I have a
tale to tell, which shows how nearly we might have been possessed of
another vast property--but we missed it. One day in my boyhood, I
remember my father coming home after his round and telling my mother
that he had a great mind to buy "the five fields" of Lord Grosvenor's,
because he thought London might extend that way. Those five fields are
now covered with the palatial streets of Belgravia,--but were then a
dismal marshy flat intersected by black ditches, and notorious for
highway robbery, as a district dimly lit with an oil lamp here and
there, and protected by nothing but the useless old watchman in his box:
it is the tract of land between Grosvenor Place and Sloane Street. His
lordship had a reputation for parsimony, and he fancied it a bargain if
he could sell to my father those squalid fields for £2000,--so he
offered them to him at that price. When my mother heard of this, she was
dead against so extravagant an outlay for that desolate region; so much
dreaded by her whenever her aunt's black horses in the old family coach
ploughed their way through the slush (MacAdam had not then arisen to
give us granite roads) to call on an ancient relative, Mr. Hall, who
possessed a priceless cupboard of old Chelsea china, and lived near the
hospital. A tradition existed that the said family waggon had once been
"stopped" thereabouts by some vizored knight of the road, and this
memory confirmed my mother's disapproval of the purchase. So my father
was dissuaded, and declined the Earl's offer. I don't suppose that if he
had accepted it the property would long have been his, but must have
changed hands directly he had doubled his investment: otherwise, imagine
what a bargain was there!--However, nobody can foresee anything beyond
an inch or a minute, and so this other chance of "wealth beyond the
dreams of avarice" long ago faded away.