DE BEAUVOIR CHANCERY SUIT: AND BELGRAVIA.
My lamented son, Henry de Beauvoir, active and athletic, was killed in South Africa by the most unlikely accident of being jolted off the front seat in a rutty road and crushed to death under the wheel of an ox-waggon creeping at two miles an hour! This sad event occurred on May 31, 1871: and the newspapers at the time, both British and South African, fully recorded not only the accident but the heroism of the brave youth, the kind but unavailing assiduities of friends, and the municipal honours accorded to him at his funeral, when the mayor and council, the volunteers and chief inhabitants of King William's Town (every window shuttered) followed him to the grave, where Archdeacon Kitton read the solemn service; and some months after, a marble headstone was placed over his remains. His two brothers have written some touching stanzas to his memory: but they are private.
I mention all this sadness now by way of publicly acknowledging the kindness of Archdeacon Kitton and, other friends at King William's Town, not forgetting a most friendly officer of the American navy, from whom we have received many excellent letters and presents from all round the world, ever since he was among the first to break to us the death of my son, now fifteen years ago: I desire, then, cordially to thank T. G. for these kindnesses: as also Mr. Robertson, of Brechin, N.B., whose son was Henry's African comrade, with him at the time of the catastrophe, and following him to the grave.
Henry having been for good ancestral reasons christened de Beauvoir, reminds me of a memorable matter of our family history which, as it is on record, I will here relate. In the days of King James I. (to quote with pedantic omissions from a pedigree), one Peter de Beauvoir, descended from a younger branch of the ducal house of Rutland, had an eldest son, James, whose daughter Rachel married Pierre Martin (my spiritual sponsor after Martin Luther), and her daughter married a Carey of Guernsey, whose descendant married my grandfather. Peter's second son, Richard, married a Priaulx, also related to us, and her daughter married a Benyon, in Charles II.'s time, whose descendant is now the millionaire, Sir Richard Benyon de Beauvoir of Reading, &c. &c. Now, this is the strange fact which has always puzzled me as well as others. The old De Beauvoir was a very thrifty miser, and died two hundred years ago possessed of great wealth, which has increased enormously up to our day, seeing he had landed property in the north of London, now including De Beauvoir Town.
In the second generation, his grand-daughters Rachel Martin of the elder branch and Marie Priaulx of the younger, contended at law for the inheritance after some intestacy: and a terrible lawsuit raged in Chancery for 150 years, between the Tuppers and the Benyons,—and was carried even to the House of Lords, being finally decided in my memory for the Benyons. I remember my uncle saying he would not take thirty thousand pounds for his individual chance,—but my less sanguine father cared not to join in the lawsuit,—saying he would not "throw good money after bad." For my own judgment, and I can speak as an old conveyancing barrister (though without business or experience) of nearly fifty years' standing, our side as the elder had the best right, though the two sisters might well and wisely have shared in a compromise. But somehow it came to be decided that the younger claimant of that vast property must have all,—and the elder be strangely left out in the cold. After the conclusion of the Lords, further litigation was hopeless: so those whom I now represent (as almost the "last of the Abruzzi") must acquiesce in getting nothing, while the opponent side has the good luck to possess, as Dr. Johnson has it, "wealth beyond the dreams of avarice." Such is life,—and law: the most obstinate and the richest win: the less pertinacious and the poorer are allowed to fail: it is a process of Darwin's survival of the fittest. All this is now "too late to mend:" but I do hope that if ever I go to Engelfield Castle, Sir Richard will be kindly and genial to his far-off cousin, who (but for some legal quibble unknown) might have dispossessed him.
My father numbered among his patients the Duke of Rutland, and I have heard him say that they half-humorously called each other cousins.