POOR widowed mothers left with wild boys to manage, I pity you from my very soul! Ye can never know what boys are; even we men cease to know when we have left boyhood behind us. They are the most troublesome, anxious, diabolical charges; and yet, if there be any good in them at all, there are such grand elements in the chasms and deeps of that struggling, half-formed, chaotic world which lies in their turbulent hearts. The greatest man that ever lived (I stop not to ask who he be) had some half hours as a boy when he had sublimer dreams and aspirations than he ever knew as a man. Alas and alas! as boys we seem of the race of Titans; how comes it that we grow up into such commonplace mortals? Who would not exchange whole hundred-weights of his matured, submissive social wisdom for one grain of the old-hero folly of our friend Lionel; braving, in the might of his valiant ignorance, Tuftoes, and masters, monitors, systems, and machines? Pr-r-r! My own cold blood is tingling again. Gently, gently! Pertinax Tuftoe, thou art right; there is no resisting thee, and that of which thou art prototype. Shake hands on it, friend World — no, don’t shake hands: I respect thee best at a distance. What a villanous look it has of Tuftoe, our friend World! Drive off to thy Dumdrums, and peace go with thee! I suspect that if Christopher Cotton had less resembled that thistle-eating, philosophical quadruped to which. I have before likened him, his conference with Mr. Tuftoe would have produced a very different effect, and that Lionel Hastings might have been preferred to one or the other of the two boys whom he now elected to the vacant board and bed at his house. To judge of the soundness of this suspicion, it is necessary to take a rapid glance at the antecedents of our narrative.
In the reign of King James I. a cadet of the illustrious House of Hastings had risen into fortune and repute, married the heiress of an old knightly family, styled The Wardours of Wardour Hall, and, according to the History of the shire, “enlarged and embellished the old Manor House, lived in great state and opulence, and died seized of the several lordships and manors of Wardour, Bletchforth, Mapletree, and Storkswold — the which are now enjoyed by the lineal descendants of his marriage with the said Ruth Wardour of Wardour.”
But from the time of Anne this goodly inheritance had gradually declined. The Hastingses of Wardour were a jovial, old English race — hospitable, large-hearted, open-handed — the sort of race that has never prospered much since the days of Anne. The immediate predecessor of Colonel Hastings had, however, been the first of that line who had moved the scene of expense from the shire to the metropolis. He was a man of great natural powers of mind, not without literary tastes, a keen politician, but always in opposition; a good liver and mighty Bacchanalian. It was not the characteristic of his family to do anything by halves., No petty peddling, small, huckster-like vices had they. If they resolved to ruin their health and their fortune, they did it in a proud, mighty way, as befitted their descent from the Plantagenet and Warwick the King-maker. Colonel Hastings had, however, received a careful education. If he inherited the reckless spirit of his ancestors, he elevated its energy at least to higher objects. Not finding sufficient field for his abilities and eager temperament in the army, which he entered on leaving college — for his regiment was not called into service — he obtained a seat in Parliament, and had already acquired a very considerable position therein, when, having triumphed by three votes, and at a cost of £12,000, in a contested election, he was carried in a chair through the borough, and the day being exceedingly wet and his head uncovered, he was carried on a bier to the family vault about a month afterwards. Colonel Hastings had married for love the daughter of Lord Norvale before he had entered Parliament or thought very seriously upon politics. When he entered fairly upon public life, his opinions were discovered to be diametrically opposed to those of his father-in-law. The Earl was a good man, and a kind man, but he had no notion of any other man, especially a son-in-law, having a will of his own. He at first contented himself with cold and disdainful reserve, but the Colonel had the indiscreet infirmity of frankness, and the true Parliamentary appetite for argument. He sought discussion on the points at issue, and the result of the discussion was that the two politicians never spoke to each other again. In fact the Earl had, in his irritation, wounded his son-in-law in one of those points where, to a man of honor, there is no other forgiveness than that of a Christian; which, in the modern sense of the phrase, whatever it may mean in the primitive and Scriptural, merely denotes that you don’t actually murder the man who has offended you. —
The Earl had said that he had been taken in and deceived; and that, had he known both the political opinions and the pecuniary affairs of Colonel Hastings at first — as he ought to have done — Colonel Hastings should never have had his daughter.
Colonel Hastings, on hearing this, took up his hat and walked from the Earl’s house that day, and passed him in the street without bowing the next. —
When the Colonel died, the pecuniary prospects of his orphan heir were certainly so unfavorable that nothing but the protection which the Court of Chancery extends to orphans of property could have put them into a worse.
Fortunately, however, as the mother was left sole guardian to her son, this appeal to the benignity of that paternal Court was not made. Fortunately, also, her own jointure, and a settlement of £10,000 upon her children by her marriage, were free from the claims of the various mortgagees, annuitants, and creditors who gathered round the estates of Wardour. And now this lady, whom we have seen but in that light most favorable perhaps to her heart, but the least so to her understanding — the light of the anxious, fond, irresolute mother — evinced a readiness and vigor of intellect of which no one could have conceived her capable. Her natural desire was to save to her son the inheritance of his forefathers. She, herself, saw mortgagee and creditor. Some she conciliated by persuasions, others by promises and personal engagements. She surrendered half her jointure to go towards instalments of the debts due to the most obdurate and pressing claimants. She contrived to prevent foreclosures, and maintained the lands intact. And as some who had only life annuities of from 10 to 15 per cent, on the property died off, and as the interest on the £10,000 assured to Lionel, as sole child of their marriage, accumulated (for this interest, though paid into her hands for his schooling and maintenance, she instantly re-invested on his behalf), there became a fair chance that, on attaining his majority, he would derive a competent in»- come from the property.
In all this, and in the general management of the estate, the letting of farms, etc., Lady Anne had found an unexpected and invaluable assistant in Christopher Cotton. Whether it was that he fatigued and prosed people down to his terms, or whether, as we may shrewdly surmise, there was a large degree of innocent cunning and mother-wit under his apparent simplicity, certain it is that no ordinary man of business could have managed for her half so well.
At the Colonel’s death Lord Norvale wrote affectionately to his daughter, and even offered to take charge of Lionel. But he accompanied this proposal with strictures so severe upon the principles, political and pecuniary, of the deceased, and so spoke of the “poor ruined boy” with a pity which Lord Dives might have expressed for an infant Lazarus, that Lady Anne could not answer with that degree of gratitude which the Earl thought becoming; and he abruptly declined all further interference in her affairs. —
So far, then, Mr. Christopher Cotton had not inaccurately represented the circumstances and prospects of the heir of Wardour. It was true that his inheritance was heavily encumbered; true that Lady Anne stinted herself to provide for his education; true that he derived, and was likely to derive, no benefit from his relationship to the Earl. But there were other and brighter views of his future on which Mr. Cotton had not expatiated, and which might materially have altered Mr. Tuftoe’s estimate of his importance.
The Colonel had been greatly respected and beloved by certain magnates of his party, and with that delicacy and tenderness which are no uncommon characteristics of those patrician politicians who, in struggling for the ascendency of their opinions, neither desire nor would accept anything for themselves, these eminent persons * * * —
[Here there is an hiatus in the manuscript. The pages introducing Mr. Tempest are lost, and the continuation of the narrative begins in the middle of a sentence.]
* — * * that he should like to hear every year how the boy went on, that before Lionel came to manhood Mr. Tempest would see him, and that he hoped to like him enough “to do something handsome for him.”
In subsequent letters Mr. Tempest had plainly requested that Lionel might be brought up to views of Parliament and public life on the right side of the question — which Lady Anne took it for granted was the side honored by Colonel Hastings — and, added this odd kinsman, “If his principles are worthy of him (that is, if they agree with mine), I can put him in Parliament and keep him there.”
No wonder, then, that Lady Anne had always looked forward to public life as the future career of her son; and here Lionel did not thwart her.
Without knowing anything of these promises in his favor, he took naturally, and as by the impulse of his temperament, to that grand sphere of strife and action which is embraced in the word Politics, when nobly construed. In his earliest usings over the trite school-boy Histories of - Greece and Rome, he would puzzle himself and his preceptors with questions on problems never solved to this day. Aristocrat and Demus, Patrician and Plebeian, did not pass by his quick, bright eyes as mere words. And, when the historical compiler indulged in some edifying moral or apophthegm, deducing effect from cause, or warning the youthful reader of the excesses of ancient commonwealths, with comparisons between Pericles and George III., to the disadvantage of the Athenian, Lionel’s combative mind started up, always in direct opposition to the compiler. At school he loved to argue, to harangue. He got up rival factions of Caesar and Pompey. He enacted the ostracism of Aristides, and attempted to justify the said ostracism in a long speech that would have done credit to Mr. Grote. He was fond of getting some old newspaper, poring over the debates, and then trying to decide for himself. These inclinations colored his general taste in literature. He had in him a vivid and glowing love for the Poetic and Picturesque, but the poetry and the picture that pleased him were of no pastoral stream, no Dutch still-life. He liked that which had strong human interest, and showed men in action, not in repose. Add to these prepossessions, towards the very career for which Fate seemed to destine him, a passionate, intense love of country — such a love as is less rare with boys than men — such a love as the glorious old Classics fan into enthusiasm — and you may recognize in Lionel Hastings one of those who are pretty sure to be troublesome to some Ministry or other, and, if they cannot be a Chatham, may hope at least to be a Cartwright.
Now, to return to Mr. Christopher Cotton: had that gentleman fairly stated to Mr. Tuftoe the better and fairer prospects of the heir of Wardour Hall; had he said “the Duke of This and the Marquis of That take the liveliest interest in his fortunes; he has a kinsman wondrous wealthy who says he can buy him into Parliament and keep him there; his abilities, such as they be, are all for action I do verily believe that Mr. Tuftoe would have found room in his house and heart for Lionel Hastings. “Not,” Mr. Tuftoe would have only said, “not that I calculate on any good he could do to me; it would be a long time to wait before he could have much influence in the creation of bishops, even of deans and prebends, be he ever so pushed and pushing. But I have a son of his own age, whom he might benefit. Early friendships are often very useful, and paternal affection is far-seeing.”
How Mr. Christopher Cotton, who managed Lady Anne’s other affairs so well, came to manage this so ill, I cannot pretend to say; unless, indeed, Mr. Christopher Cotton secretly was of Lionel’s side, and wished to prevent his going to a public school, under the idea, not that the school would be too much for him, but that he would be too much for the school.
And if thou didst so opine, and so conduct thy diplomacy, O Gentle Kit, why, thou wert not as like our friend the thistle-eater as Lavater would suppose, judging by the physiognomy. —