IN LETTERS AND journals of the Regency occasional reference is made to a person called Pronto who is generally mentioned as a fellow guest in a country house.
Conscientious researchers have identified him with a certain Miles Lufton, M.P.; he sat for West Malling, a borough in the pocket of the Earl of Amersham, and he held an important post at the Exchequer during the years 1809-1817. He spoke frequently and well in the House, in support of Vansittart’s financial policy. Nothing else is known of him save that he could sing; in the Bassett Papers he is reported to have been visiting Lingshot in 1813 and to have delighted the whole company one evening by ‘singing like an angel.’
At the age of thirty-six he wrote a short autobiography. This, together with a kind of diary that he had kept, came into the possession of his sister, Susan Lufton. She took them with her to Ireland when she went there to live with another sister, Lady Cullen, of Cullenstown, Co. Kildare. She subsequently married a Mr. Lawless and sailed for India, leaving the Lufton Papers behind her. They lay forgotten in the attics of Cullenstown for thirty years. They were then removed to the library by a Miss Honoria Cullen, who had taken it upon herself to sort all the papers in the house because she had nothing else to do. They were not read at that time, and they remained undisturbed in the library for another thirty years.
The Cullens had no motive for perusing these faded pages. They had little interest in their Lufton grandmother or in any of her family. The Luftons, who came from an obscure parsonage in Gloucestershire, were, by Cullen standards, ‘nothing much.’ Only one of them, a Eustace Lufton who became an admiral, was worth remembering. But the papers were eventually taken from their drawer in 1879, and sent to Brailsford in Warwickshire, at the request of the Hon. Frederick Harnish, brother-in-law to Sir James Cullen. This was not on account of any sudden interest in ‘Pronto,’ but in connection with the following correspondence between Harnish and Cullen.
Brailsford, Dec. 3, 1879
I think Emmie once told me she thought you had some old papers in which frequent reference is made to our queer relative, the Chalfont whose collection of pictures, etc., we now have at Brailsford.
I wonder if you would do me the great favour of letting me see them? Convalescence is such a bore that I have been amusing myself by going through his letters, and am getting very much interested in ‘Cousin Ludovic’ as he is still called. He left boxes upon boxes of papers, all in the wildest disorder. I don’t think they can have been touched since he died in 1830. He never succeeded to the Amersham title; my grandfather was his first cousin and that is how we came in.
I want to know more about him. I had always heard that he was a lunatic. But you know our family! That is what we would say about a man who bought pictures and did not hunt. We have a portrait by Opie, which looks decidedly mad, and there is a secluded suite of rooms, still called ‘Lord Chalfont’s Rooms,’ in which we, as children, imagined that he had been confined with half a dozen keepers. Emmie, who was the bravest of us, was the only one who dared go there after dark.
He must have had lucid intervals. The first papers I looked at were all about the Elgin Marbles, which he seems to have admired when nobody else did. He was one of those who supported their purchase by the British Museum. And I have found a couple of letters from Wordsworth, dull in themselves, but not, obviously, written to a lunatic.
As evidence on the other side there is a portfolio of drawings by the poet Blake. Only a madman could have drawn them or bought them. You never saw such things! One cannot even be sure whether the figures are clothed or not.
There are no letters written by him. Have you got any? He must have written thousands to have got so many replies, and he seems to have kept every scrap of paper ever sent to him. A good many are solemn records of his dreams! He wrote down every dream he had, as soon as he woke up.
It is very difficult to get information about what went on thirty years before one was born. That is an epoch about which everybody shuts up. Family skeletons ain’t respectable for at least a hundred years. My chief source of information about that period is our old neighbour, Sir Mervyn Crockett, now well over ninety. He was no end of a buck in his time, and full of anecdotes, – seldom of a kind which I can stomach. Some of them, in fact, make me feel quite sick. The squalor of their jokes is unbelievable and so was their brutality. He remembers nothing of Cousin Ludovic save that they ‘roasted Chalfont at Eton in 1796.’ I thought this to be some kind of slang, but it is literal. They hung the poor little boy up before a very hot fire for several minutes! Crockett chuckled when he remembered it; to him it was a capital joke.
Do, my dear fellow, let me see those papers, unless they are private and confidential. Love to Emmie. Tell her that I am getting on famously and hope to be well enough to visit you all in the spring.
Yours ever,
F.H.
Cullenstown, Dec. 10, 1879
We have found the papers you mean and sent them off by parcel post. They have been kicking about in the library as long as I can remember. I glanced through them and see that they are full of references to a ‘Ludovic’ who must, I think, be your man.
What you say about family skeletons is very true. I know nothing about the great-uncle Miles Lufton who seems to have written these papers. I once asked my mother about him and she protested that she didn’t either, but with a little blush which she always sports when she tells a fib. I believe she does know something and that he was not quite the thing. She hates anything shady.
I don’t see why he should have vanished into complete obscurity like this. I only took a very hasty look at the papers, but, by his own account, he seems to have been very much the thing, an M.P. and all that, went everywhere, knew everybody, and cut quite a dash. And he owned some property too, a house in Wiltshire called Troy Chimneys. There were one or two letters about it, along with the papers, which I have not sent because they cast no light on Chalfont. They are merely about leases and repairs, etc.
If you see Crockett again, do pump him. Ask him if he knew anybody called Pronto, for that seems to have been my great-uncle’s nickname among his fellow bucks. And pass on anything that he may let fall, the more disreputable the better. Emmie agrees with me that there might be some mystery. When my mother comes here after Christmas I will try her again.
Emmie sends her love and tells you not to keep your nose in dusty papers all day long, for it can’t be good for your cough.
Yours ever,
JIM
Brailsford, Dec. 15, 1879
How very good of you to send the Lufton Papers. Tell Emmie that it is good for my cough. When people ask after me, my family say: Oh, he is so much better that he is writing a history book!
How curious that your great-uncle once owned Troy Chimneys! I think I have seen it. At least, I have seen a house in Wiltshire answering to that odd name, and I can’t believe there are two. A local antiquary told me that it is probably a corruption of Trois Chemins, and three roads do certainly meet at its front gate. I saw it when I was staying at Laycock, and we all agreed that it is a pity such a striking old house should not be properly kept up. It is a mere farm-house now. There is a manure heap by the front door and half the windows are boarded up. I remember it chiefly for a very pretty stone dovecote and a great old mulberry tree in the rough grass in front.
I saw Crockett yesterday and tried to pump him about your great-uncle. The name Lufton stirred no memories, but Pronto did. He burst out laughing and said that of course he knew Pronto. Everybody knew Pronto.
He remembers no good of anybody, but I am sorry to say that he could not produce anything very disreputable about Pronto, or tell me what became of him. He described him as ludicrously determined to get himself on in the world, out to please, especially where the ladies were concerned.
He claims to be himself the author of the nickname. Signor Pronto, he says, was a character in a popular farce, — a most obliging person who always turned up in the nick of time to arrange matters for everybody. The catch word of the farce was: Pronto will manage it! Some great lady was lamenting the difficulties of arranging charades at her country house party; ‘But,’ she cried, ‘I expect Mr. Lufton tomorrow and he will manage it for me.’ At which Crockett, who was present, said: ‘Oh ay! Pronto will manage it.’ After that they all called Lufton Pronto behind his back.
I must catch the post with this. Love to Emmie.
Yours ever,
F. H.