In my next chapter I shall present Squire Hazeldean in patriarchal
state--not exactly under the fig-tree he has planted, but before the
stocks he has reconstructed.--Squire Hazeldean and his family on the
village green! The canvass is all ready for the colours.
But in this chapter I must so far afford a glimpse into antecedents
as to let the reader know that there is one member of the family whom
he is not likely to meet at present, if ever, on the village green at
Hazeldean.
Our squire lost his father two years after his birth; his mother was
very handsome--and so was her jointure; she married again at the
expiration of her year of mourning--the object of her second choice was
Colonel Egerton.
In every generation of Englishmen (at least since the lively reign
of Charles II.) there are a few whom some elegant Genius skims off
from the milk of human nature, and reserves for the cream of society.
Colonel Egerton was one of these _terque, quaterque beati_, and dwelt
apart on a top shelf in that delicate porcelain dish--not bestowed
upon vulgar buttermilk--which persons of fashion call The Great World.
Mighty was the marvel of Pall Mall, and profound was the pity of Park
Lane, when this supereminent personage condescended to lower himself
into a husband. But Colonel Egerton was not a mere gaudy butterfly;
he had the provident instincts ascribed to the bee. Youth had passed
from him--and carried off much solid property in its flight; he saw
that a time was fast coming when a home, with a partner who could help
to maintain it, would be conducive to his comforts, and an occasional
humdrum evening by the fireside beneficial to his health. In the midst
of one season at Brighton, to which gay place he had accompanied the
Prince of Wales, he saw a widow who, though in the weeds of mourning,
did not appear inconsolable. Her person pleased his taste--the
accounts of her jointure satisfied his understanding; he contrived an
introduction, and brought a brief wooing to a happy close. The late
Mr Hazeldean had so far anticipated the chance of the young widow's
second espousals, that, in case of that event, he transferred, by
his testamentary dispositions, the guardianship of his infant heir
from the mother to two squires whom he had named his executors. This
circumstance combined with her new ties somewhat to alienate Mrs
Hazeldean from the pledge of her former loves; and when she had born
a son to Colonel Egerton, it was upon that child that her maternal
affections gradually concentrated.
William Hazeldean was sent by his guardians to a large provincial
academy, at which his forefathers had received their education time
out of mind. At first he spent his holidays with Mrs Egerton; but as
she now resided either in London, or followed her lord to Brighton
to partake of the gaieties at the Pavilion--so, as he grew older,
William, who had a hearty affection for country life, and of whose
bluff manners and rural breeding Mrs Egerton (having grown exceedingly
refined) was openly ashamed, asked and obtained permission to spend his
vacations either with his guardians or at the old hall. He went late to
a small college at Cambridge, endowed in the fifteenth century by some
ancestral Hazeldean; and left it, on coming of age, without taking a
degree. A few years afterwards he married a young lady, country born
and bred like himself.
Meanwhile his half-brother, Audley Egerton, may be said to have begun
his initiation into the _beau monde_ before he had well cast aside
his coral and bells; he had been fondled in the lap of duchesses,
and galloped across the room astride on the canes of ambassadors and
princes. For Colonel Egerton was not only very highly connected--not
only one of the _Dii majoris_ of fashion--but he had the still rarer
good fortune to be an exceedingly popular man with all who knew
him;--so popular, that even the fine ladies whom he had adored and
abandoned forgave him for marrying out of "the set," and continued
to be as friendly as if he had not married at all. People who were
commonly called heartless, were never weary of doing kind things to
the Egertons.--When the time came for Audley to leave the preparatory
school, at which his infancy budded forth amongst the stateliest of the
little lilies of the field, and go to Eton, half the fifth and sixth
forms had been canvassed to be exceedingly civil to young Egerton. The
boy soon showed that he inherited his father's talent for acquiring
popularity, and that to this talent he added those which put popularity
to use. Without achieving any scholastic distinction, he yet contrived
to establish at Eton the most desirable reputation which a boy can
obtain--namely, that among his own contemporaries--the reputation of
a boy who was sure to do something when he grew to be a man. As a
gentleman commoner at Christ Church, Oxford, he continued to sustain
this high expectation, though he won no prizes and took but an ordinary
degree; and at Oxford the future "something" became more defined--it
was "something in public life" that this young man was to do.
While he was yet at the university, both his parents died--within a few
months of each other. And when Audley Egerton came of age, he succeeded
to a paternal property which was supposed to be large, and indeed had
once been so, but Colonel Egerton had been too lavish a man to enrich
his heir, and about £1500 a-year was all that sales and mortgages left
of an estate that had formerly approached a rental of ten thousand
pounds.
Still, Audley was considered to be opulent, and he did not dispel that
favourable notion by any imprudent exhibition of parsimony. On entering
the world of London, the Clubs flew open to receive him: and he woke
one morning to find himself, not indeed famous--but the fashion. To
this fashion he at once gave a certain gravity and value--he associated
as much as possible with public men and political ladies--he succeeded
in confirming the notion that he was 'born to ruin or to rule the
State.'
Now, his dearest and most intimate friend was Lord L'Estrange, from
whom he had been inseparable at Eton; and who now, if Audley Egerton
was the fashion, was absolutely the rage in London.
Harley Lord L'Estrange was the only son of the Earl of Lansmere, a
nobleman of considerable wealth, and allied by intermarriages to
the loftiest and most powerful families in England. Lord Lansmere,
nevertheless, was but little known in the circles of London. He lived
chiefly on his estates, occupying himself with the various duties of a
great proprietor, and rarely came to the metropolis; so that he could
afford to give his son a very ample allowance, when Harley, at the age
of sixteen, (having already attained to the sixth form at Eton,) left
school for one of the regiments of the Guards.
Few knew what to make of Harley L'Estrange--and that was, perhaps,
the reason why he was so much thought of. He had been by far the
most brilliant boy of his time at Eton--not only the boast of the
cricket-ground, but the marvel of the school-room--yet so full of whims
and oddities, and seeming to achieve his triumphs with so little aid
from steadfast application, that he had not left behind him the same
expectations of solid eminence which his friend and senior, Audley
Egerton, had excited. His eccentricities--his quaint sayings and
out-of-the-way actions, became as notable in the great world as they
had been in the small one of a public school. That he was very clever
there was no doubt, and that the cleverness was of a high order might
be surmised not only from the originality but the independence of
his character. He dazzled the world, without seeming to care for its
praise or its censure--dazzled it, as it were, because he could not
help shining. He had some strange notions, whether political or social,
which rather frightened his father. According to Southey, "A man should
be no more ashamed of having been a republican than of having been
young." Youth and extravagant opinions naturally go together. I don't
know whether Harley L'Estrange was a republican at the age of eighteen;
but there was no young man in London who seemed to care less for being
heir to an illustrious name and some forty or fifty thousand pounds
a-year. It was a vulgar fashion in that day to play the exclusive, and
cut persons who wore bad neckcloths and called themselves Smith or
Johnson. Lord L'Estrange never cut any one, and it was quite enough to
slight some worthy man because of his neckcloth or his birth, to ensure
to the offender the pointed civilities of this eccentric successor to
the Dorimonts and the Wildairs.
It was the wish of his father that Harley, as soon as he came of age,
should represent the borough of Lansmere, (which said borough was the
single plague of the Earl's life.) But this wish was never realised.
Suddenly, when the young idol of London still wanted some two or
three years of his majority, a new whim appeared to seize him. He
withdrew entirely from society--he left unanswered the most pressing
three-cornered notes of inquiry and invitation that ever strewed
the table of a young Guardsman; he was rarely seen anywhere in his
former haunts--when seen, was either alone or with Egerton; and his
gay spirits seemed wholly to have left him. A profound melancholy was
written in his countenance, and breathed in the listless tones of his
voice. At this time the Guards were achieving in the Peninsula their
imperishable renown; but the battalion to which Harley belonged was
detained at home; and whether chafed by inaction or emulous of glory,
the young Lord suddenly exchanged into a cavalry regiment, from which a
recent memorable conflict had swept one half the officers. Just before
he joined, a vacancy happening to occur for the representation of
Lansmere, he made it his special request to his father that the family
interest might be given to his friend Egerton--went down to the Park,
which adjoined the borough, to take leave of his parents--and Egerton
followed, to be introduced to the electors. This visit made a notable
epoch in the history of many personages who figure in my narrative;
but at present I content myself with saying, that circumstances arose
which, just as the canvass for the new election commenced, caused both
L'Estrange and Audley to absent themselves from the scene of action,
and that the last even wrote to Lord Lansmere expressing his intention
of declining to contest the borough.
Fortunately for the parliamentary career of Audley Egerton, the
election had become to Lord Lansmere not only a matter of public
importance, but of personal feeling. He resolved that the battle
should be fought out, even in the absence of the candidate, and at his
own expense. Hitherto the contest for this distinguished borough had
been, to use the language of Lord Lansmere, "conducted in the spirit
of gentlemen,"--that is to say, the only opponents to the Lansmere
interest had been found in one or the other of two rival families
in the same county; and as the Earl was a hospitable courteous man,
much respected and liked by the neighbouring gentry, so the hostile
candidate had always interlarded his speeches with profuse compliments
to his Lordship's high character, and civil expressions as to his
Lordship's candidate. But, thanks to successive elections, one of
these two families had come to an end, and its actual representative
was now residing within the Rules of the Bench; the head of the other
family was the sitting member, and, by an amicable agreement with the
Lansmere interest, he remained as neutral as it is in the power of any
sitting member to be amidst the passions of an intractable committee.
Accordingly, it had been hoped that Egerton would come in without
opposition, when, the very day on which he had abruptly left the place,
a handbill, signed "Haverill Dashmore, Captain R.N., Baker Street,
Portman Square," announced, in very spirited language, the intention
of that gentleman to emancipate the borough from the unconstitutional
domination of an oligarchical faction, not with a view to his own
political aggrandisement--indeed, at great personal inconvenience--but
actuated solely by abhorrence to tyranny, and patriotic passion for the
purity of election.
This announcement was followed, within two hours, by the arrival of
Captain Dashmore himself, in a carriage-and-four covered with yellow
favours, and filled, inside and out, with harum-scarum looking friends
who had come down with him to aid the canvass and share the fun.
Captain Dashmore was a thorough sailor, who had, however, taken a
disgust to the profession from the date in which a Minister's nephew
had been appointed to the command of a ship to which the Captain
considered himself unquestionably entitled. It is just to the Minister
to add, that Captain Dashmore had shown as little regard for orders
from a distance, as had immortalized Nelson himself; but then the
disobedience had not achieved the same redeeming success as that of
Nelson, and Captain Dashmore ought to have thought himself fortunate
in escaping a severer treatment than the loss of promotion. But no
man knows when he is well off; and retiring on half-pay, just as
he came into unexpected possession of some forty or fifty thousand
pounds, bequeathed by a distant relation, Captain Dashmore was seized
with a vindictive desire to enter parliament, and inflict oratorical
chastisement on the Administration.
A very few hours sufficed to show the sea-captain to be a most capital
electioneerer for a small and not very enlightened borough. It is true
that he talked the saddest nonsense ever heard from an open window;
but then his jokes were so broad, his manner so hearty, his voice so
big, that in those dark days, before the schoolmaster was abroad, he
would have beaten your philosophical Radical and moralising Democrat
hollow. Moreover he kissed all the women, old and young, with all the
zest of a sailor who has known what it is to be three years at sea
without sight of a beardless lip; he threw open all the public-houses,
asked a numerous committee every day to dinner, and, chucking his purse
up in the air, declared "he would stick to his guns while there was a
shot in the locker." Till then, there had been but little political
difference between the candidate supported by Lord Lansmere's interest
and the opposing parties--for country gentlemen, in those days, were
pretty much of the same way of thinking, and the question had been
really local--viz., whether the Lansmere interest should or should
not prevail over that of the two squirearchical families who had
alone, hitherto, ventured to oppose it. But though Captain Dashmore
was really a very loyal man, and much too old a sailor to think that
the State (which, according to established metaphor, is a vessel,
_par excellence_,) should admit Jack upon quarterdeck, yet, what with
talking against lords and aristocracy, jobs and abuses, and searching
through no very refined vocabulary for the strongest epithets to apply
to those irritating nouns-substantive, his bile had got the better
of his understanding, and he became fuddled, as it were, by his own
eloquence. Thus, though as innocent of Jacobinical designs as he was
incapable of setting the Thames on fire, you would have guessed him, by
his speeches, to be one of the most determined incendiaries that ever
applied a match to the combustible materials of a contested election;
while, being by no means accustomed to respect his adversaries, he
could not have treated the Earl of Lansmere with less ceremony if his
Lordship had been a Frenchman. He usually designated that respectable
nobleman by the title of "Old Pompous;" and the Mayor, who was never
seen abroad but in top-boots, and the Solicitor, who was of a large
build, received from his irreverent wit the joint soubriquet of "Tops
and Bottoms!" Hence the election had now become, as I said before, a
personal matter with my Lord, and, indeed, with the great heads of
the Lansmere interest. The Earl seemed to consider his very coronet
at stake in the question. "The man from Baker Street," with his
preternatural audacity, appeared to him a being ominous and awful--not
so much to be regarded with resentment, as with superstitious terror:
he felt as felt the dignified Montezuma, when that ruffianly Cortez,
with his handful of Spanish rapscallions, bearded him in his own
capital, and in the midst of his Mexican splendour.--"The gods were
menaced if man could be so insolent!" wherefore said my Lord,
tremulously,--"The Constitution is gone if the Man from Baker Street
comes in for Lansmere!"
But, in the absence of Audley Egerton, the election looked
extremely ugly, and Captain Dashmore gained ground hourly, when
the Lansmere Solicitor happily bethought him of a notable proxy
for the missing candidate. The Squire of Hazeldean, with his young
wife, had been invited by the Earl in honour of Audley; and in the
Squire the Solicitor beheld the only mortal who could cope with the
sea-captain,--a man with a voice as burly, and a face as bold--a man
who, if permitted for the nonce by Mrs Hazeldean, would kiss all the
women no less heartily than the Captain kissed them; and who was,
moreover, a taller, and a handsomer, and a younger man--all three,
great recommendations in the kissing department of a contested
election. Yes, to canvass the borough, and to speak from the window,
Squire Hazeldean would be even more popularly presentable than the
London-bred and accomplished Audley Egerton himself.
The Squire, applied to and urged on all sides, at first said bluntly,
"that he would do anything in reason to serve his brother, but that he
did not like, for his own part, appearing, even in proxy, as a Lord's
nominee; and moreover, if he was to be sponsor for his brother, why, he
must promise and vow, in his name, to be staunch and true to the land
they lived by; and how could he tell that Audley, when once he got into
the House, would not forget the land, and then he, William Hazeldean,
would be made a liar, and look like a turncoat!"
But these scruples being overruled by the arguments of the gentlemen
and the entreaties of the ladies, who took in the election that intense
interest which those gentle creatures usually do take in all matters of
strife and contest, the Squire at length consented to confront the Man
from Baker Street, and went accordingly into the thing with that good
heart and old English spirit with which he went into everything whereon
he had once made up his mind.
The expectations formed of the Squire's capacities for popular
electioneering were fully realised. He talked quite as much nonsense as
Captain Dashmore on every subject except the landed interest;--there he
was great, for he knew the subject well--knew it by the instinct that
comes with practice, and compared to which all your showy theories are
mere cobwebs and moonshine.
The agricultural outvoters--many of whom, not living under Lord
Lansmere, but being small yeomen, had hitherto prided themselves on
their independence, and gone against my Lord--could not in their hearts
go against one who was every inch the farmer's friend. They began
to share in the Earl's personal interest against the Man from Baker
Street; and big fellows, with legs bigger round than Captain Dashmore's
tight little body, and huge whips in their hands, were soon seen
entering the shops, "intimidating the electors," as Captain Dashmore
indignantly declared.
These new recruits made a great difference in the muster-roll of the
Lansmere books; and when the day for polling arrived, the result was a
fair question for even betting. At the last hour, after a neck-and-neck
contest, Mr Audley Egerton beat the Captain by two votes. And the names
of these voters were John Avenel, resident freeman, and his son-in-law,
Mark Fairfield, an outvoter, who, though a Lansmere freeman, had
settled in Hazeldean, where he had obtained the situation of head
carpenter on the Squire's estate.
These votes were unexpected; for, though Mark Fairfield had come
to Lansmere on purpose to support the Squire's brother, and though
the Avenels had been always staunch supporters of the Lansmere Blue
interest, yet a severe affliction (as to the nature of which, not
desiring to sadden the opening of my story, I am considerately silent)
had befallen both these persons, and they had left the town on the very
day after Lord L'Estrange and Mr Egerton had quitted Lansmere Park.
Whatever might have been the gratification of the Squire, as a
canvasser and a brother, at Mr Egerton's triumph, it was much damped
when, on leaving the dinner given in honour of the victory at the
Lansmere Arms, and about, with no steady step, to enter the carriage
which was to convey him to his Lordship's house, a letter was put into
his hands by one of the gentlemen who had accompanied the Captain
to the scene of action; and the perusal of that letter, and a few
whispered words from the bearer thereof, sent the Squire back to Mrs
Hazeldean a much soberer man than she had ventured to hope for. The
fact was, that on the day of nomination, the Captain having honoured
Mr Hazeldean with many poetical and figurative appellations--such as
"Prize Ox," "Tony Lumpkin," "Blood-sucking Vampire," and "Brotherly
Warming-Pan," the Squire had retorted by a joke about "Salt Water
Jack;" and the Captain, who, like all satirists, was extremely
susceptible and thin-skinned, could not consent to be called "Salt
Water Jack" by a "Prize Ox" and a "Blood-sucking Vampire." The letter,
therefore, now conveyed to Mr Hazeldean by a gentleman, who, being
from the Sister Country, was deemed the most fitting accomplice in the
honourable destruction of a brother mortal, contained nothing more nor
less than an invitation to single combat; and the bearer thereof, with
the suave politeness enjoined by etiquette on such well-bred homicidal
occasions, suggested the expediency of appointing the place of meeting
in the neighbourhood of London, in order to prevent interference from
the suspicious authorities of Lansmere.
The natives of some countries--the French in particular--think little
of that formal operation which goes by the name of DUELLING. Indeed,
they seem rather to like it than otherwise. But there is nothing
your thorough-paced Englishman--a Hazeldean of Hazeldean--considers
with more repugnance and aversion, than that same cold-blooded
ceremonial. It is not within the range of an Englishman's ordinary
habits of thinking. He prefers going to law--a much more destructive
proceeding of the two. Nevertheless, if an Englishman must fight, why,
he will fight. He says "it is very foolish;" he is sure "it is most
unchristianlike;" he agrees with all that Philosopher, Preacher, and
Press have laid down on the subject; but he makes his will, says his
prayers, and goes out, like a heathen!
It never, therefore, occurred to the Squire to show the white feather
upon this unpleasant occasion. The next day, feigning excuse to attend
the sale of a hunting stud at Tattersall's, he ruefully went up to
London, after taking a peculiarly affectionate leave of his wife.
Indeed, the Squire felt convinced that he should never return home
except in a coffin. "It stands to reason," said he to himself, "that a
man who has been actually paid by the King's Government for shooting
people ever since he was a little boy in a midshipman's jacket,
must be a dead hand at the job. I should not mind if it was with
double-barrelled Mantons and small shot; but, ball and pistol! they
arn't human nor sportsmanlike!" However, the Squire, after settling his
worldly affairs, and hunting up an old College friend who undertook
to be his second, proceeded to a sequestered corner of Wimbledon
Common, and planted himself, not sideways, as one ought to do in such
encounters, (the which posture the Squire swore was an unmanly way
of shirking,) but full front to the mouth of his adversary's pistol,
with such sturdy composure, that Captain Dashmore, who, though an
excellent shot, was at bottom as good-natured a fellow as ever lived,
testified his admiration by letting off his gallant opponent with ball
in the fleshy part of the shoulder; after which he declared himself
perfectly satisfied. The parties then shook hands, mutual apologies
were exchanged, and the Squire, much to his astonishment to find
himself still alive, was conveyed to Limmer's Hotel, where, after a
considerable amount of anguish, the ball was extracted, and the wound
healed. Now it was all over, the Squire felt very much raised in his
own conceit; and, when he was in a humour more than ordinarily fierce,
that perilous event became a favourite allusion with him.
He considered, moreover, that his brother had incurred at his hand
the most lasting obligations; and that, having procured Audley's
return to Parliament, and defended his interests at the risk of his
own life, he had an absolute right to dictate to that gentleman how to
vote--upon all matters at least connected with the landed interest. And
when, not very long after Audley took his seat in Parliament, (which
he did not do for some months,) he thought proper both to vote and to
speak in a manner wholly belying the promises the Squire had made on
his behalf, Mr Hazeldean wrote him such a trimmer, that it could not
but produce an unconciliatory reply. Shortly afterwards, the Squire's
exasperation reached the culminating point; for, having to pass through
Lansmere on a market day, he was hooted by the very farmers whom he had
induced to vote for his brother; and, justly imputing the disgrace to
Audley, he never heard the name of that traitor to the land mentioned
without a heightened colour and an indignant expletive. Monsieur de
Roqueville--who was the greatest wit of his day--had, like the Squire,
a half-brother, with whom he was not on the best of terms, and of whom
he always spoke as his "_frère de loin_." Audley Egerton was thus
Squire Hazeldean's "_distant-brother_!"--Enough of these explanatory
antecedents,--let us return to the Stocks.