Myuncle drove for some time in silence, but I was conscious that his eye was always coming round to me, and I had an uneasy conviction that he was already beginning to ask himself whether he could make anything of me, or whether he had been betrayed into an indiscretion when he had allowed his sister to persuade him to show her son something of the grand world in which he lived.
“You sing, don’t you, nephew?” he asked, suddenly.
“Yes, sir, a little.”
“A baritone, I should fancy?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And your mother tells me that you play the fiddle. These things will be of service to you with the Prince. Music runs in his family. Your education has been what you could get at a village school. Well, you are not examined in Greek roots in polite society, which is lucky for some of us. It is as well just to have a tag or two of Horace or Virgil: ‘sub tegmine fagi,’ or ‘habet fœnum in cornu,’ which gives a flavour to one’s conversation like the touch of garlic in a salad. It is notbon tonto be learned, but it is a graceful thing to indicate that you have forgotten a good deal. Can you write verse?”
“I fear not, sir.”
“A small book of rhymes may be had for half a crown. Vers de Société are a great assistance to a young man. If you have the ladies on your side, it does not matter whom you have against you. You must learn to open a door, to enter a room, to present a snuff-box, raising the lid with the forefinger of the hand in which you hold it. You must acquire the bow for a man, with its necessary touch of dignity, and that for a lady, which cannot be too humble, and should still contain the least suspicion of abandon. You must cultivate a manner with women which shall be deprecating and yet audacious. Have you any eccentricity?”
It made me laugh, the easy way in which he asked the question, as if it were a most natural thing to possess.
“You have a pleasant, catching laugh, at all events,” said he. “But an eccentricity is verybon tonat present, and if you feel any leaning towards one, I should certainly advise you to let it run its course. Petersham would have remained a mere peer all his life had it not come out that he had a snuff-box for every day in the year, and that he had caught cold through a mistake of his valet, who sent him out on a bitter winter day with a thin Sèvres china box instead of a thick tortoiseshell. That brought him out of the ruck, you see, and people remember him. Even some small characteristic, such as having an apricot tart on your sideboard all the year round, or putting your candle out at night by stuffing it under your pillow, serves to separate you from your neighbour. In my own case, it is my precise judgment upon matter of dress and decorum which has placed me where I am. I do not profess to follow a law. I set one. For example, I am taking you to-day to see the Prince in a nankeen vest. What do you think will be the consequence of that?”
My fears told me that it might be my own very great discomfiture, but I did not say so.
“Why, the night coach will carry the news to London. It will be in Brookes’s and White’s to-morrow morning. Within, a week St. James’s Street and the Mall will be full of nankeen waistcoats. A most painful incident happened to me once. My cravat came undone in the street, and I actually walked from Carlton House to Watier’s in Bruton Street with the two ends hanging loose. Do you suppose it shook my position? The same evening there were dozens of young bloods walking the streets of London with their cravats loose. If I had not rearranged mine there would not be one tied in the whole kingdom now, and a great art would have been prematurely lost. You have not yet began to practise it?”
I confessed that I had not.
“You should begin now in your youth. I will myself teach you thecoup d’archet. By using a few hours in each day, which would otherwise be wasted, you may hope to have excellent cravats in middle life. The whole knack lies in pointing your chin to the sky, and then arranging your folds by the gradual descent of your lower jaw.”
When my uncle spoke like this there was always that dancing, mischievous light in his dark blue eyes, which showed me that this humour of his was a conscious eccentricity, depending, as I believe, upon a natural fastidiousness of taste, but wilfully driven to grotesque lengths for the very reason which made him recommend me also to develop some peculiarity of my own. When I thought of the way in which he had spoken of his unhappy friend, Lord Avon, upon the evening before, and of the emotion which he showed as he told the horrible story, I was glad to think that there was the heart of a man there, however much it might please him to conceal it.
And, as it happened, I was very soon to have another peep at it, for a most unexpected event befell us as we drew up in front of the Crown hotel. A swarm of ostlers and grooms had rushed out to us, and my uncle, throwing down the reins, gathered Fidelio on his cushion from under the seat.
“Ambrose,” he cried, “you may take Fidelio.”
But there came no answer. The seat behind was unoccupied. Ambrose was gone.
We could hardly believe our eyes when we alighted and found that it was really so. He had most certainly taken his seat there at Friar’s Oak, and from there on we had come without a break as fast as the mares could travel. Whither, then, could he have vanished to?
“He’s fallen off in a fit!” cried my uncle. “I’d drive back, but the Prince is expecting us. Where’s the landlord? Here, Coppinger, send your best man back to Friar’s Oak as fast as his horse can go, to find news of my valet, Ambrose. See that no pains be spared. Now, nephew, we shall lunch, and then go up to the Pavilion.”
My uncle was much disturbed by the strange loss of his valet, the more so as it was his custom to go through a whole series of washings and changings after even the shortest journey. For my own part, mindful of my mother’s advice, I carefully brushed the dust from my clothes and made myself as neat as possible. My heart was down in the soles of my little silver-buckled shoes now that I had the immediate prospect of meeting so great and terrible a person as the Prince of Wales. I had seen his flaring yellow barouche flying through Friar’s Oak many a time, and had halloaed and waved my hat with the others as it passed, but never in my wildest dreams had it entered my head that I should ever be called upon to look him in the face and answer his questions. My mother had taught me to regard him with reverence, as one of those whom God had placed to rule over us; but my uncle smiled when I told him of her teaching.
“You are old enough to see things as they are, nephew,” said he, “and your knowledge of them is the badge that you are in that inner circle where I mean to place you. There is no one who knows the Prince better than I do, and there is no one who trusts him less. A stranger contradiction of qualities was never gathered under one hat. He is a man who is always in a hurry, and yet has never anything to do. He fusses about things with which he has no concern, and he neglects every obvious duty. He is generous to those who have no claim upon him, but he has ruined his tradesmen by refusing to pay his just debts. He is affectionate to casual acquaintances, but he dislikes his father, loathes his mother, and is not on speaking terms with his wife. He claims to be the first gentleman of England, but the gentlemen of England have responded by blackballing his friends at their clubs, and by warning him off from Newmarket under suspicion of having tampered with a horse. He spends his days in uttering noble sentiments, and contradicting them by ignoble actions. He tells stories of his own doings which are so grotesque that they can only be explained by the madness which runs in his blood. And yet, with all this, he can be courteous, dignified, and kindly upon occasion, and I have seen an impulsive good-heartedness in the man which has made me overlook faults which come mainly from his being placed in a position which no one upon this earth was ever less fitted to fill. But this is between ourselves, nephew; and now you will come with me and you will form an opinion for yourself.”
It was but a short walk, and yet it took us some time, for my uncle stalked along with great dignity, his lace-bordered handkerchief in one hand, and his cane with the clouded amber head dangling from the other. Every one that we met seemed to know him, and their hats flew from their heads as we passed. He took little notice of these greetings, save to give a nod to one, or to slightly raise his forefinger to another. It chanced, however, that as we turned into the Pavilion Grounds, we met a magnificent team of four coal-black horses, driven by a rough-looking, middle-aged fellow in an old weather-stained cape. There was nothing that I could see to distinguish him from any professional driver, save that he was chatting very freely with a dainty little woman who was perched on the box beside him.
“Halloa, Charlie! Good drive down?” he cried.
My uncle bowed and smiled to the lady.
“Broke it at Friar’s Oak,” said he. “I’ve my light curricle and two new mares—half thorough-bred, half Cleveland bay.”
“What d’you think of my team of blacks?” asked the other.
“Yes, Sir Charles, what d’you think of them? Ain’t they damnation smart?” cried the little woman.
“Plenty of power. Good horses for the Sussex clay. Too thick about the fetlocks for me. I like to travel.”
“Travel!” cried the woman, with extraordinary vehemence. “Why, what the—” and she broke into such language as I had never heard from a man’s lips before. “We’d start with our swingle-bars touching, and we’d have your dinner ordered, cooked, laid, and eaten before you were there to claim it.”
“By George, yes, Letty is right!” cried the man. “D’you start to-morrow?”
“Yes, Jack.”
“Well, I’ll make you an offer. Look ye here, Charlie! I’ll spring my cattle from the Castle Square at quarter before nine. You can follow as the clock strikes. I’ve double the horses and double the weight. If you so much as see me before we cross Westminster Bridge, I’ll pay you a cool hundred. If not, it’s my money—play or pay. Is it a match?”
“Very good,” said my uncle, and, raising his hat, he led the way into the grounds. As I followed, I saw the woman take the reins, while the man looked after us, and squirted a jet of tobacco-juice from between his teeth in coachman fashion.
“That’s Sir John Lade,” said my uncle, “one of the richest men and best whips in England. There isn’t a professional on the road that can handle either his tongue or his ribbons better; but his wife, Lady Letty, is his match with the one or the other.”
“It was dreadful to hear her,” said I.
“Oh, it’s her eccentricity. We all have them; and she amuses the Prince. Now, nephew, keep close at my elbow, and have your eyes open and your mouth shut.”
Two lines of magnificent red and gold footmen who guarded the door bowed deeply as my uncle and I passed between them, he with his head in the air and a manner as if he entered into his own, whilst I tried to look assured, though my heart was beating thin and fast. Within there was a high and large hall, ornamented with Eastern decorations, which harmonized with the domes and minarets of the exterior. A number of people were moving quietly about, forming into groups and whispering to each other. One of these, a short, burly, red-faced man, full of fuss and self-importance, came hurrying up to my uncle.
“I have de goot news, Sir Charles,” said he, sinking his voice as one who speaks of weighty measures. “Es ist vollendet—dat is, I have it at last thoroughly done.”
“Well, serve it hot,” said my uncle, coldly, “and see that the sauces are a little better than when last I dined at Carlton House.”
“Ah, mine Gott, you tink I talk of de cuisine. It is de affair of de Prince dat I speak of. Dat is one littlevol-au-ventdat is worth one hundred tousand pound. Ten per cent., and double to be repaid when de Royal pappa die.Alles ist fertig. Goldshmidt of de Hague have took it up, and de Dutch public has subscribe de money.”
“God help the Dutch public!” muttered my uncle, as the fat little man bustled off with his news to some new-comer. “That’s the Prince’s famous cook, nephew. He has not his equal in England for afilet sauté aux champignons. He manages his master’s money affairs.”
“The cook!” I exclaimed, in bewilderment.
“You look surprised, nephew.”
“I should have thought that some respectable banking firm—”
My uncle inclined his lips to my ear.
“No respectable house would touch them,” he whispered. “Ah, Mellish, is the Prince within?”
“In the private saloon, Sir Charles,” said the gentleman addressed.
“Any one with him?”
“Sheridan and Francis. He said he expected you.”
“Then we shall go through.”
I followed him through the strangest succession of rooms, full of curious barbaric splendour which impressed me as being very rich and wonderful, though perhaps I should think differently now. Gold and scarlet in arabesque designs gleamed upon the walls, with gilt dragons and monsters writhing along cornices and out of corners. Look where I would, on panel or ceiling, a score of mirrors flashed back the picture of the tall, proud, white-faced man, and the youth who walked so demurely at his elbow. Finally, a footman opened a door, and we found ourselves in the Prince’s own private apartment.
Two gentlemen were lounging in a very easy fashion upon luxurious fauteuils at the further end of the room and a third stood between them, his thick, well-formed legs somewhat apart and his hands clasped behind him. The sun was shining in upon them through a side-window, and I can see the three faces now—one in the dusk, one in the light, and one cut across by the shadow. Of those at the sides, I recall the reddish nose and dark, flashing eyes of the one, and the hard, austere face of the other, with the high coat-collars and many-wreathed cravats. These I took in at a glance, but it was upon the man in the centre that my gaze was fixed, for this I knew must be the Prince of Wales.
George was then in his forty-first year, and with the help of his tailor and his hairdresser, he might have passed as somewhat less. The sight of him put me at my ease, for he was a merry-looking man, handsome too in a portly, full-blooded way, with laughing eyes and pouting, sensitive lips. His nose was turned upwards, which increased the good-humoured effect of his countenance at the expense of its dignity. His cheeks were pale and sodden, like those of a man who lived too well and took too little exercise. He was dressed in a single-breasted black coat buttoned up, a pair of leather pantaloons stretched tightly across his broad thighs, polished Hessian boots, and a huge white neckcloth.
“Halloa, Tregellis!” he cried, in the cheeriest fashion, as my uncle crossed the threshold, and then suddenly the smile faded from his face, and his eyes gleamed with resentment. “What the deuce is this?” he shouted, angrily.
A thrill of fear passed through me as I thought that it was my appearance which had produced this outburst. But his eyes were gazing past us, and glancing round we saw that a man in a brown coat and scratch wig had followed so closely at our heels, that the footmen had let him pass under the impression that he was of our party. His face was very red, and the folded blue paper which he carried in his hand shook and crackled in his excitement.
“Why, it’s Vuillamy, the furniture man,” cried the Prince. “What, am I to be dunned in my own private room? Where’s Mellish? Where’s Townshend? What the deuce is Tom Tring doing?”
“I wouldn’t have intruded, your Royal Highness, but I must have the money—or even a thousand on account would do.”
“Must have it, must you, Vuillamy? That’s a fine word to use. I pay my debts in my own time, and I’m not to be bullied. Turn him out, footman! Take him away!”
“If I don’t get it by Monday, I shall be in your papa’s Bench,” wailed the little man, and as the footman led him out we could hear him, amidst shouts of laughter, still protesting that he would wind up in “papa’s Bench.”
“That’s the very place for a furniture man,” said the man with the red nose.
“It should be the longest bench in the world, Sherry,” answered the Prince, “for a good many of his subjects will want seats on it. Very glad to see you back, Tregellis, but you must really be more careful what you bring in upon your skirts. It was only yesterday that we had an infernal Dutchman here howling about some arrears of interest and the deuce knows what. ‘My good fellow,’ said I, ‘as long as the Commons starve me, I have to starve you,’ and so the matter ended.”
“I think, sir, that the Commons would respond now if the matter were fairly put before them by Charlie Fox or myself,” said Sheridan.
The Prince burst out against the Commons with an energy of hatred that one would scarce expect from that chubby, good-humoured face.
“Why, curse them!” he cried. “After all their preaching and throwing my father’s model life, as they called it, in my teeth, they had to payhisdebts to the tune of nearly a million, whilst I can’t get a hundred thousand out of them. And look at all they’ve done for my brothers! York is Commander-in-Chief. Clarence is Admiral. What am I? Colonel of a damned dragoon regiment under the orders of my own younger brother. It’s my mother that’s at the bottom of it all. She always tried to hold me back. But what’s this you’ve brought, Tregellis, eh?”
My uncle put his hand on my sleeve and led me forward.
“This is my sister’s son, sir; Rodney Stone by name,” said he. “He is coming with me to London, and I thought it right to begin by presenting him to your Royal Highness.”
“Quite right! Quite right!” said the Prince, with a good-natured smile, patting me in a friendly way upon the shoulder. “Is your mother living?”
“Yes, sir,” said I.
“If you are a good son to her you will never go wrong. And, mark my words, Mr. Rodney Stone, you should honour the King, love your country, and uphold the glorious British Constitution.”
When I thought of the energy with which he had just been cursing the House of Commons, I could scarce keep from smiling, and I saw Sheridan put his hand up to his lips.
“You have only to do this, to show a regard for your word, and to keep out of debt in order to insure a happy and respected life. What is your father, Mr. Stone? Royal Navy! Well, it is a glorious service. I have had a touch of it myself. Did I ever tell you how we laid aboard the French sloop of warMinerve—hey, Tregellis?”
“No, sir,” said my uncle. Sheridan and Francis exchanged glances behind the Prince’s back.
“She was flying her tricolour out there within sight of my pavilion windows. Never saw such monstrous impudence in my life! It would take a man of less mettle than me to stand it. Out I went in my little cock-boat—you know my sixty-ton yawl, Charlie?—with two four-pounders on each side, and a six-pounder in the bows.”
“Well, sir! Well, sir! And what then, sir?” cried Francis, who appeared to be an irascible, rough-tongued man.
“You will permit me to tell the story in my own way, Sir Philip,” said the Prince, with dignity. “I was about to say that our metal was so light that I give you my word, gentlemen, that I carried my port broadside in one coat pocket, and my starboard in the other. Up we came to the big Frenchman, took her fire, and scraped the paint off her before we let drive. But it was no use. By George, gentlemen, our balls just stuck in her timbers like stones in a mud wall. She had her nettings up, but we scrambled aboard, and at it we went hammer and anvil. It was a sharp twenty minutes, but we beat her people down below, made the hatches fast on them, and towed her into Seaham. Surely you were with us, Sherry?”
“I was in London at the time,” said Sheridan, gravely.
“You can vouch for it, Francis!”
“I can vouch to having heard your Highness tell the story.”
“It was a rough little bit of cutlass and pistol work. But, for my own part, I like the rapier. It’s a gentleman’s weapon. You heard of my bout with the Chevalier d’Eon? I had him at my sword-point for forty minutes at Angelo’s. He was one of the best blades in Europe, but I was a little too supple in the wrist for him. ‘I thank God there was a button on your Highness’s foil,’ said he, when we had finished our breather. By the way, you’re a bit of a duellist yourself, Tregellis. How often have you been out?”
“I used to go when I needed exercise,” said my uncle, carelessly. “But I have taken to tennis now instead. A painful incident happened the last time that I was out, and it sickened me of it.”
“You killed your man—?”
“No, no, sir, it was worse than that. I had a coat that Weston has never equalled. To say that it fitted me is not to express it. Itwasme—like the hide on a horse. I’ve had sixty from him since, but he could never approach it. The sit of the collar brought tears into my eyes, sir, when first I saw it; and as to the waist—”
“But the duel, Tregellis!” cried the Prince.
“Well, sir, I wore it at the duel, like the thoughtless fool that I was. It was Major Hunter, of the Guards, with whom I had had a littletracasserie, because I hinted that he should not come into Brookes’s smelling of the stables. I fired first, and missed. He fired, and I shrieked in despair. ‘He’s hit! A surgeon! A surgeon!’ they cried. ‘A tailor! A tailor!’ said I, for there was a double hole through the tails of my masterpiece. No, it was past all repair. You may laugh, sir, but I’ll never see the like of it again.”
I had seated myself on a settee in the corner, upon the Prince’s invitation, and very glad I was to remain quiet and unnoticed, listening to the talk of these men. It was all in the same extravagant vein, garnished with many senseless oaths; but I observed this difference, that, whereas my uncle and Sheridan had something of humour in their exaggeration, Francis tended always to ill-nature, and the Prince to self-glorification. Finally, the conversation turned to music—I am not sure that my uncle did not artfully bring it there, and the Prince, hearing from him of my tastes, would have it that I should then and there sit down at the wonderful little piano, all inlaid with mother-of-pearl, which stood in the corner, and play him the accompaniment to his song. It was called, as I remember, “The Briton Conquers but to Save,” and he rolled it out in a very fair bass voice, the others joining in the chorus, and clapping vigorously when he finished.
“Bravo, Mr. Stone!” said he. “You have an excellent touch; and I know what I am talking about when I speak of music. Cramer, of the Opera, said only the other day that he had rather hand his bâton to me than to any amateur in England. Halloa, it’s Charlie Fox, by all that’s wonderful!”
He had run forward with much warmth, and was shaking the hand of a singular-looking person who had just entered the room. The new-comer was a stout, square-built man, plainly and almost carelessly dressed, with an uncouth manner and a rolling gait. His age might have been something over fifty, and his swarthy, harshly-featured face was already deeply lined either by his years or by his excesses. I have never seen a countenance in which the angel and the devil were more obviously wedded. Above, was the high, broad forehead of the philosopher, with keen, humorous eyes looking out from under thick, strong brows. Below, was the heavy jowl of the sensualist curving in a broad crease over his cravat. That brow was the brow of the public Charles Fox, the thinker, the philanthropist, the man who rallied and led the Liberal party during the twenty most hazardous years of its existence. That jaw was the jaw of the private Charles Fox, the gambler, the libertine, the drunkard. Yet to his sins he never added the crowning one of hypocrisy. His vices were as open as his virtues. In some quaint freak of Nature, two spirits seemed to have been joined in one body, and the same frame to contain the best and the worst man of his age.
“I’ve run down from Chertsey, sir, just to shake you by the hand, and to make sure that the Tories have not carried you off.”
“Hang it, Charlie, you know that I sink or swim with my friends! A Whig I started, and a Whig I shall remain.”
I thought that I could read upon Fox’s dark face that he was by no means so confident about the Prince’s principles.
“Pitt has been at you, sir, I understand?”
“Yes, confound him! I hate the sight of that sharp-pointed snout of his, which he wants to be ever poking into my affairs. He and Addington have been boggling about the debts again. Why, look ye, Charlie, if Pitt held me in contempt he could not behave different.”
I gathered from the smile which flitted over Sheridan’s expressive face that this was exactly what Pitt did do. But straightway they all plunged into politics, varied by the drinking of sweet maraschino, which a footman brought round upon a salver. The King, the Queen, the Lords, and the Commons were each in succession cursed by the Prince, in spite of the excellent advice which he had given me about the British Constitution.
“Why, they allow me so little that I can’t look after my own people. There are a dozen annuities to old servants and the like, and it’s all I can do to scrape the money together to pay them. However, my”—he pulled himself up and coughed in a consequential way—“my financial agent has arranged for a loan, repayable upon the King’s death. This liqueur isn’t good for either of us, Charlie. We’re both getting monstrous stout.”
“I can’t get any exercise for the gout,” said Fox.
“I am blooded fifty ounces a month, but the more I take the more I make. You wouldn’t think, to look at us, Tregellis, that we could do what we have done. We’ve had some days and nights together, Charlie!”
Fox smiled and shook his head.
“You remember how we posted to Newmarket before the races. We took a public coach, Tregellis, clapped the postillions into the rumble, and jumped on to their places. Charlie rode the leader and I the wheeler. One fellow wouldn’t let us through his turnpike, and Charlie hopped off and had his coat off in a minute. The fellow thought he had to do with a fighting man, and soon cleared the way for us.”
“By the way, sir, speaking of fighting men, I give a supper to the Fancy at the Waggon and Horses on Friday next,” said my uncle. “If you should chance to be in town, they would think it a great honour if you should condescend to look in upon us.”
“I’ve not seen a fight since I saw Tom Tyne, the tailor, kill Earl fourteen years ago. I swore off then, and you know me as a man of my word, Tregellis. Of course, I’ve been at the ringsideincog.many a time, but never as the Prince of Wales.”
“We should be vastly honoured if you would comeincog.to our supper, sir.”
“Well, well, Sherry, make a note of it. We’ll be at Carlton House on Friday. The Prince can’t come, you know, Tregellis, but you might reserve a chair for the Earl of Chester.”
“Sir, we shall be proud to see the Earl of Chester there,” said my uncle.
“By the way, Tregellis,” said Fox, “there’s some rumour about your having a sporting bet with Sir Lothian Hume. What’s the truth of it?”
“Only a small matter of a couple of thous to a thou, he giving the odds. He has a fancy to this new Gloucester man, Crab Wilson, and I’m to find a man to beat him. Anything under twenty or over thirty-five, at or about thirteen stone.”
“You take Charlie Fox’s advice, then,” cried the Prince. “When it comes to handicapping a horse, playing a hand, matching a cock, or picking a man, he has the best judgment in England. Now, Charlie, whom have we upon the list who can beat Crab Wilson, of Gloucester?”
I was amazed at the interest and knowledge which all these great people showed about the ring, for they not only had the deeds of the principal men of the time—Belcher, Mendoza, Jackson, or Dutch Sam—at their fingers’ ends, but there was no fighting man so obscure that they did not know the details of his deeds and prospects. The old ones and then the young were discussed—their weight, their gameness, their hitting power, and their constitution. Who, as he saw Sheridan and Fox eagerly arguing as to whether Caleb Baldwin, the Westminster costermonger, could hold his own with Isaac Bittoon, the Jew, would have guessed that the one was the deepest political philosopher in Europe, and that the other would be remembered as the author of the wittiest comedy and of the finest speech of his generation?
The name of Champion Harrison came very early into the discussion, and Fox, who had a high idea of Crab Wilson’s powers, was of opinion that my uncle’s only chance lay in the veteran taking the field again. “He may be slow on his pins, but he fights with his head, and he hits like the kick of a horse. When he finished Black Baruk the man flew across the outer ring as well as the inner, and fell among the spectators. If he isn’t absolutely stale, Tregellis, he is your best chance.”
My uncle shrugged his shoulders.
“If poor Avon were here we might do something with him, for he was Harrison’s first patron, and the man was devoted to him. But his wife is too strong for me. And now, sir, I must leave you, for I have had the misfortune to-day to lose the best valet in England, and I must make inquiry for him. I thank your Royal Highness for your kindness in receiving my nephew in so gracious a fashion.”
“Till Friday, then,” said the Prince, holding out his hand. “I have to go up to town in any case, for there is a poor devil of an East India Company’s officer who has written to me in his distress. If I can raise a few hundreds, I shall see him and set things right for him. Now, Mr. Stone, you have your life before you, and I hope it will be one which your uncle may be proud of. You will honour the King, and show respect for the Constitution, Mr. Stone. And, hark ye, you will avoid debt, and bear in mind that your honour is a sacred thing.”
So I carried away a last impression of his sensual, good-humoured face, his high cravat, and his broad leather thighs. Again we passed the strange rooms, the gilded monsters, and the gorgeous footmen, and it was with relief that I found myself out in the open air once more, with the broad blue sea in front of us, and the fresh evening breeze upon our faces.
Myuncle and I were up betimes next morning, but he was much out of temper, for no news had been heard of his valet Ambrose. He had indeed become like one of those ants of which I have read, who are so accustomed to be fed by smaller ants that when they are left to themselves they die of hunger. It was only by the aid of a man whom the landlord procured, and of Fox’s valet, who had been sent expressly across, that his toilet was at last performed.
“I must win this race, nephew,” said he, when he had finished breakfast; “I can’t afford to be beat. Look out of the window and see if the Lades are there.”
“I see a red four-in-hand in the square, and there is a crowd round it. Yes, I see the lady upon the box seat.”
“Is our tandem out?”
“It is at the door.”
“Come, then, and you shall have such a drive as you never had before.”
He stood at the door pulling on his long brown driving-gauntlets and giving his orders to the ostlers.
“Every ounce will tell,” said he. “We’ll leave that dinner-basket behind. And you can keep my dog for me, Coppinger. You know him and understand him. Let him have his warm milk and curaçoa the same as usual. Whoa, my darlings, you’ll have your fill of it before you reach Westminster Bridge.”
“Shall I put in the toilet-case?” asked the landlord. I saw the struggle upon my uncle’s face, but he was true to his principles.
“Put it under the seat—the front seat,” said he. “Nephew, you must keep your weight as far forward as possible. Can you do anything on a yard of tin? Well, if you can’t, we’ll leave the trumpet. Buckle that girth up, Thomas. Have you greased the hubs, as I told you? Well, jump up, nephew, and we’ll see them off.”
Quite a crowd had gathered in the Old Square: men and women, dark-coated tradesmen, bucks from the Prince’s Court, and officers from Hove, all in a buzz of excitement; for Sir John Lade and my uncle were two of the most famous whips of the time, and a match between them was a thing to talk of for many a long day.
“The Prince will be sorry to have missed the start,” said my uncle. “He doesn’t show before midday. Ah, Jack, good morning! Your servant, madam! It’s a fine day for a little bit of waggoning.”
As our tandem came alongside of the four-in-hand, with the two bonny bay mares gleaming like shot-silk in the sunshine, a murmur of admiration rose from the crowd. My uncle, in his fawn-coloured driving-coat, with all his harness of the same tint, looked the ideal of a Corinthian whip; while Sir John Lade, with his many-caped coat, his white hat, and his rough, weather-beaten face, might have taken his seat with a line of professionals upon any ale-house bench without any one being able to pick him out as one of the wealthiest landowners in England. It was an age of eccentricity, but he had carried his peculiarities to a length which surprised even the out-and-outers by marrying the sweetheart of a famous highwayman when the gallows had come between her and her lover. She was perched by his side, looking very smart in a flowered bonnet and grey travelling-dress, while in front of them the four splendid coal-black horses, with a flickering touch of gold upon their powerful, well-curved quarters, were pawing the dust in their eagerness to be off.
“It’s a hundred that you don’t see us before Westminster with a quarter of an hour’s start,” said Sir John.
“I’ll take you another hundred that we pass you,” answered my uncle.
“Very good. Time’s up. Good-bye!” He gave atchkof the tongue, shook his reins, saluted with his whip; in true coachman’s style, and away he went, taking the curve out of the square in a workmanlike fashion that fetched a cheer from the crowd. We heard the dwindling roar of the wheels upon the cobblestones until they died away in the distance.
It seemed one of the longest quarters of an hour that I had ever known before the first stroke of nine boomed from the parish clock. For my part, I was fidgeting in my seat in my impatience, but my uncle’s calm, pale face and large blue eyes were as tranquil and demure as those of the most unconcerned spectator. He was keenly on the alert, however, and it seemed to me that the stroke of the clock and the thong of his whip fell together—not in a blow, but in a sharp snap over the leader, which sent us flying with a jingle and a rattle upon our fifty miles’ journey. I heard a roar from behind us, saw the gliding lines of windows with staring faces and waving handkerchiefs, and then we were off the stones and on to the good white road which curved away in front of us, with the sweep of the green downs upon either side.
I had been provided with shillings that the turnpike-gate might not stop us, but my uncle reined in the mares and took them at a very easy trot up all the heavy stretch which ends in Clayton Hill. He let them go then, and we flashed through Friar’s Oak and across St. John’s Common without more than catching a glimpse of the yellow cottage which contained all that I loved best. Never have I travelled at such a pace, and never have I felt such a sense of exhilaration from the rush of keen upland air upon our faces, and from the sight of those two glorious creatures stretched to their utmost, with the roar of their hoofs and the rattle of our wheels as the light curricle bounded and swayed behind them.
“It’s a long four miles uphill from here to Hand Cross,” said my uncle, as we flew through Cuckfield. “I must ease them a bit, for I cannot afford to break the hearts of my cattle. They have the right blood in them, and they would gallop until they dropped if I were brute enough to let them. Stand up on the seat, nephew, and see if you can get a glimpse of them.”
I stood up, steadying myself upon my uncle’s shoulder, but though I could see for a mile, or perhaps a quarter more, there was not a sign of the four-in-hand.
“If he has sprung his cattle up all these hills they’ll be spent ere they see Croydon,” said he.
“They have four to two,” said I.
“J’en suis bien sûr. Sir John’s black strain makes a good, honest creature, but not fliers like these. There lies Cuckfield Place, where the towers are, yonder. Get your weight right forward on the splashboard now that we are going uphill, nephew. Look at the action of that leader: did ever you see anything more easy and more beautiful?”
We were taking the hill at a quiet trot, but even so, we made the carrier, walking in the shadow of his huge, broad-wheeled, canvas-covered waggon, stare at us in amazement. Close to Hand Cross we passed the Royal Brighton stage, which had left at half-past seven, dragging heavily up the slope, and its passengers, toiling along through the dust behind, gave us a cheer as we whirled by. At Hand Cross we caught a glimpse of the old landlord, hurrying out with his gin and his gingerbread; but the dip of the ground was downwards now, and away we flew as fast as eight gallant hoofs could take us.
“Do you drive, nephew?”
“Very little, sir.”
“There is no driving on the Brighton Road.”
“How is that, sir?”
“Too good a road, nephew. I have only to give them their heads, and they will race me into Westminster. It wasn’t always so. When I was a very young man one might learn to handle his twenty yards of tape here as well as elsewhere. There’s not much really good waggoning now south of Leicestershire. Show me a man who can hit ’em and hold ’em on a Yorkshire dale-side, and that’s the man who comes from the right school.”
We had raced over Crawley Down and into the broad main street of Crawley village, flying between two country waggons in a way which showed me that even now a driver might do something on the road. With every turn I peered ahead, looking for our opponents, but my uncle seemed to concern himself very little about them, and occupied himself in giving me advice, mixed up with so many phrases of the craft, that it was all that I could do to follow him.
“Keep a finger for each, or you will have your reins clubbed,” said he. “As to the whip, the less fanning the better if you have willing cattle; but when you want to put a little life into a coach, see that you get your thong on to the one that needs it, and don’t let it fly round after you’ve hit. I’ve seen a driver warm up the off-side passenger on the roof behind him every time he tried to cut his off-side wheeler. I believe that is their dust over yonder.”
A long stretch of road lay before us, barred with the shadows of wayside trees. Through the green fields a lazy blue river was drawing itself slowly along, passing under a bridge in front of us. Beyond was a young fir plantation, and over its olive line there rose a white whirl which drifted swiftly, like a cloud-scud on a breezy day.
“Yes, yes, it’s they!” cried my uncle. “No one else would travel as fast. Come, nephew, we’re half-way when we cross the mole at Kimberham Bridge, and we’ve done it in two hours and fourteen minutes. The Prince drove to Carlton House with a three tandem in four hours and a half. The first half is the worst half, and we might cut his time if all goes well. We should make up between this and Reigate.”
And we flew. The bay mares seemed to know what that white puff in front of us signified, and they stretched themselves like greyhounds. We passed a phaeton and pair London-bound, and we left it behind as if it had been standing still. Trees, gates, cottages went dancing by. We heard the folks shouting from the fields, under the impression that we were a runaway. Faster and faster yet they raced, the hoofs rattling like castanets, the yellow manes flying, the wheels buzzing, and every joint and rivet creaking and groaning, while the curricle swung and swayed until I found myself clutching to the side-rail. My uncle eased them and glanced at his watch as we saw the grey tiles and dingy red houses of Reigate in the hollow beneath us.
“We did the last six well under twenty minutes,” said he. “We’ve time in hand now, and a little water at the Red Lion will do them no harm. Red four-in-hand passed, ostler?”
“Just gone, sir.”
“Going hard?”
“Galloping full split, sir! Took the wheel off a butcher’s cart at the corner of the High Street, and was out o’ sight before the butcher’s boy could see what had hurt him.”
Z-z-z-z-ack! went the long thong, and away we flew once more. It was market day at Redhill, and the road was crowded with carts of produce, droves of bullocks, and farmers’ gigs. It was a sight to see how my uncle threaded his way amongst them all. Through the market-place we dashed amidst the shouting of men, the screaming of women, and the scuttling of poultry, and then we were out in the country again, with the long, steep incline of the Redhill Road before us. My uncle waved his whip in the air with a shrill view-halloa.
There was the dust-cloud rolling up the hill in front of us, and through it we had a shadowy peep of the backs of our opponents, with a flash of brass-work and a gleam of scarlet.
“There’s half the game won, nephew. Now we must pass them. Hark forrard, my beauties! By George, if Kitty isn’t foundered!”
The leader had suddenly gone dead lame. In an instant we were both out of the curricle and on our knees beside her. It was but a stone, wedged between frog and shoe in the off fore-foot, but it was a minute or two before we could wrench it out. When we had regained our places the Lades were round the curve of the hill and out of sight.
“Bad luck!” growled my uncle. “But they can’t get away from us!” For the first time he touched the mares up, for he had but cracked the whip over their heads before. “If we catch them in the next few miles we can spare them for the rest of the way.”
They were beginning to show signs of exhaustion. Their breath came quick and hoarse, and their beautiful coats were matted with moisture. At the top of the hill, however, they settled down into their swing once more.
“Where on earth have they got to?” cried my uncle. “Can you make them out on the road, nephew?”
We could see a long white ribbon of it, all dotted with carts and waggons coming from Croydon to Redhill, but there was no sign of the big red four-in-hand.
“There they are! Stole away! Stole away!” he cried, wheeling the mares round into a side road which struck to the right out of that which we had travelled. “There they are, nephew! On the brow of the hill!”
Sure enough, on the rise of a curve upon our right the four-in-hand had appeared, the horses stretched to the utmost. Our mares laid themselves out gallantly, and the distance between us began slowly to decrease. I found that I could see the black band upon Sir John’s white hat, then that I could count the folds of his cape; finally, that I could see the pretty features of his wife as she looked back at us.
“We’re on the side road to Godstone and Warlingham,” said my uncle. “I suppose he thought that he could make better time by getting out of the way of the market carts. But we’ve got the deuce of a hill to come down. You’ll see some fun, nephew, or I am mistaken.”
As he spoke I suddenly saw the wheels of the four-in-hand disappear, then the body of it, and then the two figures upon the box, as suddenly and abruptly as if it had bumped down the first three steps of some gigantic stairs. An instant later we had reached the same spot, and there was the road beneath us, steep and narrow, winding in long curves into the valley. The four-in-hand was swishing down it as hard as the horses could gallop.
“Thought so!” cried my uncle. “If he doesn’t brake, why should I? Now, my darlings, one good spurt, and we’ll show them the colour of our tailboard.”
We shot over the brow and flew madly down the hill with the great red coach roaring and thundering before us. Already we were in her dust, so that we could see nothing but the dim scarlet blur in the heart of it, rocking and rolling, with its outline hardening at every stride. We could hear the crack of the whip in front of us, and the shrill voice of Lady Lade as she screamed to the horses. My uncle was very quiet, but when I glanced up at him I saw that his lips were set and his eyes shining, with just a little flush upon each pale cheek. There was no need to urge on the mares, for they were already flying at a pace which could neither be stopped nor controlled. Our leader’s head came abreast of the off hind wheel, then of the off front one—then for a hundred yards we did not gain an inch, and then with a spurt the bay leader was neck to neck with the black wheeler, and our fore wheel within an inch of their hind one.
“Dusty work!” said my uncle, quietly.
“Fan ’em, Jack! Fan ’em!” shrieked the lady.
He sprang up and lashed at his horses.
“Look out, Tregellis!” he shouted. “There’s a damnation spill coming for somebody.”
We had got fairly abreast of them now, the rumps of the horses exactly a-line and the fore wheels whizzing together. There was not six inches to spare in the breadth of the road, and every instant I expected to feel the jar of a locking wheel. But now, as we came out from the dust, we could see what was ahead, and my uncle whistled between his teeth at the sight.
Two hundred yards or so in front of us there was a bridge, with wooden posts and rails upon either side. The road narrowed down at the point, so that it was obvious that the two carriages abreast could not possibly get over. One must give way to the other. Already our wheels were abreast of their wheelers.
“I lead!” shouted my uncle. “You must pull them, Lade!”
“Not I!” he roared.
“No, by George!” shrieked her ladyship. “Fan ’em, Jack; keep on fanning ’em!”
It seemed to me that we were all going to eternity together. But my uncle did the only thing that could have saved us. By a desperate effort we might just clear the coach before reaching the mouth of the bridge. He sprang up, and lashed right and left at the mares, who, maddened by the unaccustomed pain, hurled themselves on in a frenzy. Down we thundered together, all shouting, I believe, at the top of our voices in the madness of the moment; but still we were drawing steadily away, and we were almost clear of the leaders when we flew on to the bridge. I glanced back at the coach, and I saw Lady Lade, with her savage little white teeth clenched together, throw herself forward and tug with both hands at the off-side reins.
“Jam them, Jack!” she cried. “Jam the—before they can pass.”
Had she done it an instant sooner we should have crashed against the wood-work, carried it away, and been hurled into the deep gully below. As it was, it was not the powerful haunch of the black leader which caught our wheel, but the forequarter, which had not weight enough to turn us from our course. I saw a red wet seam gape suddenly through the black hair, and next instant we were flying alone down the road, whilst the four-in-hand had halted, and Sir John and his lady were down in the road together tending to the wounded horse.
“Easy now, my beauties!” cried my uncle, settling down into his seat again, and looking back over his shoulder. “I could not have believed that Sir John Lade would have been guilty of such a trick as pulling that leader across. I do not permit amauvaise plaisanterieof that sort. He shall hear from me to-night.”
“It was the lady,” said I.
My uncle’s brow cleared, and he began to laugh.
“It was little Letty, was it?” said he. “I might have known it. There’s a touch of the late lamented Sixteen-string Jack about the trick. Well, it is only messages of another kind that I send to a lady, so we’ll just drive on our way, nephew, and thank our stars that we bring whole bones over the Thames.”
We stopped at the Greyhound, at Croydon, where the two good little mares were sponged and petted and fed, after which, at an easier pace, we made our way through Norbury and Streatham. At last the fields grew fewer and the walls longer. The outlying villas closed up thicker and thicker, until their shoulders met, and we were driving between a double line of houses with garish shops at the corners, and such a stream of traffic as I had never seen, roaring down the centre. Then suddenly we were on a broad bridge with a dark coffee-brown river flowing sulkily beneath it, and bluff-bowed barges drifting down upon its bosom. To right and left stretched a broken, irregular line of many-coloured houses winding along either bank as far as I could see.
“That’s the House of Parliament, nephew,” said my uncle, pointing with his whip, “and the black towers are Westminster Abbey. How do, your Grace? How do? That’s the Duke of Norfolk—the stout man in blue upon the swish-tailed mare. Now we are in Whitehall. There’s the Treasury on the left, and the Horse Guards, and the Admiralty, where the stone dolphins are carved above the gate.”
I had the idea, which a country-bred lad brings up with him, that London was merely a wilderness of houses, but I was astonished now to see the green slopes and the lovely spring trees showing between.
“Yes, those are the Privy Gardens,” said my uncle, “and there is the window out of which Charles took his last step on to the scaffold. You wouldn’t think the mares had come fifty miles, would you? See howles petites cheriesstep out for the credit of their master. Look at the barouche, with the sharp-featured man peeping out of the window. That’s Pitt, going down to the House. We are coming into Pall Mall now, and this great building on the left is Carlton House, the Prince’s Palace. There’s St. James’s, the big, dingy place with the clock, and the two red-coated sentries before it. And here’s the famous street of the same name, nephew, which is the very centre of the world, and here’s Jermyn Street opening out of it, and finally, here’s my own little box, and we are well under the five hours from Brighton Old Square.”
Myuncle’s house in Jermyn Street was quite a small one—five rooms and an attic. “A man-cook and a cottage,” he said, “are all that a wise man requires.” On the other hand, it was furnished with the neatness and taste which belonged to his character, so that his most luxurious friends found something in the tiny rooms which made them discontented with their own sumptuous mansions. Even the attic, which had been converted into my bedroom, was the most perfect little bijou attic that could possibly be imagined. Beautiful and valuable knick-knacks filled every corner of every apartment, and the house had become a perfect miniature museum which would have delighted a virtuoso. My uncle explained the presence of all these pretty things with a shrug of his shoulders and a wave of his hands. “They aredes petites cadeaux,” said he, “but it would be an indiscretion for me to say more.”
We found a note from Ambrose waiting for us which increased rather than explained the mystery of his disappearance.
“My dear Sir Charles Tregellis,” it ran, “it will ever be a subject of regret to me that the force of circumstances should have compelled me to leave your service in so abrupt a fashion, but something occurred during our journey from Friar’s Oak to Brighton which left me without any possible alternative. I trust, however, that my absence may prove to be but a temporary one. The isinglass recipe for the shirt-fronts is in the strong-box at Drummond’s Bank.—Yours obediently, AMBROSE.”
“Well, I suppose I must fill his place as best I can,” said my uncle, moodily. “But how on earth could something have occurred to make him leave me at a time when we were going full-trot down hill in my curricle? I shall never find his match again either for chocolate or cravats.Je suis desolé! But now, nephew, we must send to Weston and have you fitted up. It is not for a gentleman to go to a shop, but for the shop to come to the gentleman. Until you have your clothes you must remainen retraite.”
The measuring was a most solemn and serious function, though it was nothing to the trying-on two days later, when my uncle stood by in an agony of apprehension as each garment was adjusted, he and Weston arguing over every seam and lapel and skirt until I was dizzy with turning round in front of them. Then, just as I had hoped that all was settled, in came young Mr. Brummell, who promised to be an even greater exquisite than my uncle, and the whole matter had to be thrashed out between them. He was a good-sized man, this Brummell, with a long, fair face, light brown hair, and slight sandy side-whiskers. His manner was languid, his voice drawling, and while he eclipsed my uncle in the extravagance of his speech, he had not the air of manliness and decision which underlay all my kinsman’s affectations.
“Why, George,” cried my uncle, “I thought you were with your regiment.”
“I’ve sent in my papers,” drawled the other.
“I thought it would come to that.”
“Yes. The Tenth was ordered to Manchester, and they could hardly expect me to go to a place like that. Besides, I found the major monstrous rude.”
“How was that?”
“He expected me to know about his absurd drill, Tregellis, and I had other things to think of, as you may suppose. I had no difficulty in taking my right place on parade, for there was a trooper with a red nose on a flea-bitten grey, and I had observed that my post was always immediately in front of him. This saved a great deal of trouble. The other day, however, when I came on parade, I galloped up one line and down the other, but the deuce a glimpse could I get of that long nose of his! Then, just as I was at my wits’ end, I caught sight of him, alone at one side; so I formed up in front. It seems he had been put there to keep the ground, and the major so far forgot himself as to say that I knew nothing of my duties.”
My uncle laughed, and Brummell looked me up and down with his large, intolerant eyes.
“These will do very passably,” said he. “Buff and blue are always very gentlemanlike. But a sprigged waistcoat would have been better.”
“I think not,” said my uncle, warmly.
“My dear Tregellis, you are infallible upon a cravat, but you must allow me the right of my own judgment upon vests. I like it vastly as it stands, but a touch of red sprig would give it the finish that it needs.”
They argued with many examples and analogies for a good ten minutes, revolving round me at the same time with their heads on one side and their glasses to their eyes. It was a relief to me when they at last agreed upon a compromise.
“You must not let anything I have said shake your faith in Sir Charles’s judgment, Mr. Stone,” said Brummell, very earnestly.
I assured him that I should not.
“If you were my nephew, I should expect you to follow my taste. But you will cut a very good figure as it is. I had a young cousin who came up to town last year with a recommendation to my care. But he would take no advice. At the end of the second week I met him coming down St. James’s Street in a snuff-coloured coat cut by a country tailor. He bowed to me. Of course I knew what was due to myself. I looked all round him, and there was an end to his career in town. You are from the country, Mr. Stone?”
“From Sussex, sir.”
“Sussex! Why, that is where I send my washing to. There is an excellent clear-starcher living near Hayward’s Heath. I send my shirts two at a time, for if you send more it excites the woman and diverts her attention. I cannot abide anything but country washing. But I should be vastly sorry to have to live there. What can a man find to do?”
“You don’t hunt, George?”
“When I do, it’s a woman. But surely you don’t go to hounds, Charles?”
“I was out with the Belvoir last winter.”
“The Belvoir! Did you hear how I smoked Rutland? The story has been in the clubs this month past. I bet him that my bag would weigh more than his. He got three and a half brace, but I shot his liver-coloured pointer, so he had to pay. But as to hunting, what amusement can there be in flying about among a crowd of greasy, galloping farmers? Every man to his own taste, but Brookes’s window by day and a snug corner of the macao table at Watier’s by night, give me all I want for mind and body. You heard how I plucked Montague the brewer!”
“I have been out of town.”
“I had eight thousand from him at a sitting. ‘I shall drink your beer in future, Mr. Brewer,’ said I. ‘Every blackguard in London does,’ said he. It was monstrous impolite of him, but some people cannot lose with grace. Well, I am going down to Clarges Street to pay Jew King a little of my interest. Are you bound that way? Well, good-bye, then! I’ll see you and your young friend at the club or in the Mall, no doubt,” and he sauntered off upon his way.
“That young man is destined to take my place,” said my uncle, gravely, when Brummell had departed. “He is quite young and of no descent, but he has made his way by his cool effrontery, his natural taste, and his extravagance of speech. There is no man who can be impolite in so polished a fashion. He has a half-smile, and a way of raising his eyebrows, for which he will be shot one of these mornings. Already his opinion is quoted in the clubs as a rival to my own. Well, every man has his day, and when I am convinced that mine is past, St. James’s Street shall know me no more, for it is not in my nature to be second to any man. But now, nephew, in that buff and blue suit you may pass anywhere; so, if you please, we will step into myvis-à-vis, and I will show you something of the town.”
How can I describe all that we saw and all that we did upon that lovely spring day? To me it was as if I had been wafted to a fairy world, and my uncle might have been some benevolent enchanter in a high-collared, long-tailed coat, who was guiding me about in it. He showed me the West-end streets, with the bright carriages and the gaily dressed ladies and sombre-clad men, all crossing and hurrying and recrossing like an ants’ nest when you turn it over with a stick. Never had I formed a conception of such endless banks of houses, and such a ceaseless stream of life flowing between. Then we passed down the Strand, where the crowd was thicker than ever, and even penetrated beyond Temple Bar and into the City, though my uncle begged me not to mention it, for he would not wish it to be generally known. There I saw the Exchange and the Bank and Lloyd’s Coffee House, with the brown-coated, sharp-faced merchants and the hurrying clerks, the huge horses and the busy draymen. It was a very different world this from that which we had left in the West—a world of energy and of strength, where there was no place for the listless and the idle. Young as I was, I knew that it was here, in the forest of merchant shipping, in the bales which swung up to the warehouse windows, in the loaded waggons which roared over the cobblestones, that the power of Britain lay. Here, in the City of London, was the taproot from which Empire and wealth and so many other fine leaves had sprouted. Fashion and speech and manners may change, but the spirit of enterprise within that square mile or two of land must not change, for when it withers all that has grown from it must wither also.
We lunched at Stephen’s, the fashionable inn in Bond Street, where I saw a line of tilburys and saddle-horses, which stretched from the door to the further end of the street. And thence we went to the Mall in St. James’s Park, and thence to Brookes’s, the great Whig club, and thence again to Watier’s, where the men of fashion used to gamble. Everywhere I met the same sort of men, with their stiff figures and small waists, all showing the utmost deference to my uncle, and for his sake an easy tolerance of me. The talk was always such as I had already heard at the Pavilion: talk of politics, talk of the King’s health, talk of the Prince’s extravagance, of the expected renewal of war, of horse-racing, and of the ring. I saw, too, that eccentricity was, as my uncle had told me, the fashion; and if the folk upon the Continent look upon us even to this day as being a nation of lunatics, it is no doubt a tradition handed down from the time when the only travellers whom they were likely to see were drawn from the class which I was now meeting.
It was an age of heroism and of folly. On the one hand soldiers, sailors, and statesmen of the quality of Pitt, Nelson, and afterwards Wellington, had been forced to the front by the imminent menace of Buonaparte. We were great in arms, and were soon also to be great in literature, for Scott and Byron were in their day the strongest forces in Europe. On the other hand, a touch of madness, real or assumed, was a passport through doors which were closed to wisdom and to virtue. The man who could enter a drawing-room walking upon his hands, the man who had filed his teeth that he might whistle like a coachman, the man who always spoke his thoughts aloud and so kept his guests in a quiver of apprehension, these were the people who found it easy to come to the front in London society. Nor could the heroism and the folly be kept apart, for there were few who could quite escape the contagion of the times. In an age when the Premier was a heavy drinker, the Leader of the Opposition a libertine, and the Prince of Wales a combination of the two, it was hard to know where to look for a man whose private and public characters were equally lofty. At the same time, with all its faults it was astrongage, and you will be fortunate if in your time the country produces five such names as Pitt, Fox, Scott, Nelson, and Wellington.
It was in Watier’s that night, seated by my uncle on one of the red velvet settees at the side of the room, that I had pointed out to me some of those singular characters whose fame and eccentricities are even now not wholly forgotten in the world. The long, many-pillared room, with its mirrors and chandeliers, was crowded with full-blooded, loud-voiced men-about-town, all in the same dark evening dress with white silk stockings, cambric shirt-fronts, and little, flat chapeau-bras under their arms.
“The acid-faced old gentleman with the thin legs is the Marquis of Queensberry,” said my uncle. “His chaise was driven nineteen miles in an hour in a match against the Count Taafe, and he sent a message fifty miles in thirty minutes by throwing it from hand to hand in a cricket-ball. The man he is talking to is Sir Charles Bunbury, of the Jockey Club, who had the Prince warned off the Heath at Newmarket on account of the in-and-out riding of Sam Chifney, his jockey. There’s Captain Barclay going up to them now. He knows more about training than any man alive, and he has walked ninety miles in twenty-one hours. You have only to look at his calves to see that Nature built him for it. There’s another walker there, the man with a flowered vest standing near the fireplace. That is Buck Whalley, who walked to Jerusalem in a long blue coat, top-boots, and buckskins.”
“Why did he do that, sir?” I asked, in astonishment.
My uncle shrugged his shoulders.
“It was his humour,” said he. “He walked into society through it, and that was better worth reaching than Jerusalem. There’s Lord Petersham, the man with the beaky nose. He always rises at six in the evening, and he has laid down the finest cellar of snuff in Europe. It was he who ordered his valet to put half a dozen of sherry by his bed and call him the day after to-morrow. He’s talking to Lord Panmure, who can take his six bottles of claret and argue with a bishop after it. The lean man with the weak knees is General Scott who lives upon toast and water and has won £200,000 at whist. He is talking to young Lord Blandford who gave £1800 for a Boccaccio the other day. Evening, Dudley!”
“Evening, Tregellis!” An elderly, vacant-looking man had stopped before us and was looking me up and down.
“Some young cub Charlie Tregellis has caught in the country,” he murmured. “He doesn’t look as if he would be much credit to him. Been out of town, Tregellis?”
“For a few days.”
“Hem!” said the man, transferring his sleepy gaze to my uncle. “He’s looking pretty bad. He’ll be going into the country feet foremost some of these days if he doesn’t pull up!” He nodded, and passed on.
“You mustn’t look so mortified, nephew,” said my uncle, smiling. “That’s old Lord Dudley, and he has a trick of thinking aloud. People used to be offended, but they take no notice of him now. It was only last week, when he was dining at Lord Elgin’s, that he apologized to the company for the shocking bad cooking. He thought he was at his own table, you see. It gives him a place of his own in society. That’s Lord Harewood he has fastened on to now. Harewood’s peculiarity is to mimic the Prince in everything. One day the Prince hid his queue behind the collar of his coat, so Harewood cut his off, thinking that they were going out of fashion. Here’s Lumley, the ugly man. ‘L’homme laid’ they called him in Paris. The other one is Lord Foley—they call him No. 11, on account of his thin legs.”
“There is Mr. Brummell, sir,” said I.
“Yes, he’ll come to us presently. That young man has certainly a future before him. Do you observe the way in which he looks round the room from under his drooping eyelids, as though it were a condescension that he should have entered it? Small conceits are intolerable, but when they are pushed to the uttermost they become respectable. How do, George?”
“Have you heard about Vereker Merton?” asked Brummell, strolling up with one or two other exquisites at his heels. “He has run away with his father’s woman-cook, and actually married her.”
“What did Lord Merton do?”
“He congratulated him warmly, and confessed that he had always underrated his intelligence. He is to live with the young couple, and make a handsome allowance on condition that the bride sticks to her old duties. By the way, there was a rumour that you were about to marry, Tregellis.”
“I think not,” answered my uncle. “It would be a mistake to overwhelm one by attentions which are a pleasure to many.”
“My view, exactly, and very neatly expressed,” cried Brummell. “Is it fair to break a dozen hearts in order to intoxicate one with rapture? I’m off to the Continent next week.”
“Bailiffs?” asked one of his companions.
“Too bad, Pierrepoint. No, no; it is pleasure and instruction combined. Besides, it is necessary to go to Paris for your little things, and if there is a chance of the war breaking out again, it would be well to lay in a supply.”
“Quite right,” said my uncle, who seemed to have made up his mind to outdo Brummell in extravagance. “I used to get my sulphur-coloured gloves from the Palais Royal. When the war broke out in ’93 I was cut off from them for nine years. Had it not been for a lugger which I specially hired to smuggle them, I might have been reduced to English tan.”
“The English are excellent at a flat-iron or a kitchen poker, but anything more delicate is beyond them.”
“Our tailors are good,” cried my uncle, “but our stuffs lack taste and variety. The war has made us morerococothan ever. It has cut us off from travel, and there is nothing to match travel for expanding the mind. Last year, for example, I came upon some new waist-coating in the Square of San Marco, at Venice. It was yellow, with the prettiest little twill of pink running through it. How could I have seen it had I not travelled? I brought it back with me, and for a time it was all the rage.”
“The Prince took it up.”
“Yes, he usually follows my lead. We dressed so alike last year that we were frequently mistaken for each other. It tells against me, but so it was. He often complains that things do not look as well upon him as upon me, but how can I make the obvious reply? By the way, George, I did not see you at the Marchioness of Dover’s ball.”