For the mere adventurer, the man of ready wit and a fearless temperament, politics offer the best road to fortune. The abilities that would have secured a mere mediocrity of position in some profession will here win their way upwards. The desultory character of reading and acquirements, so fatal to men chained to a single pursuit, is eminently favourable to him who must talk about every thing, with, at least, the appearance of knowledge; while the very scantiness of his store suggests a recklessness that has great success in the world.
In England we have but one high road to eminence—Parliament. Literature, whose rewards are so great in France, with us only leads to intimacy with the “Trade” and a name in “the Row.” It is true, Parliamentary reputation is of slow growth, and dependent on many circumstances totally remote from the capacity and attainments of him who seeks it. Are you the son of a great name in the Lords, the representative of an immense estate, or of great commercial wealth? are you high in the esteem of Corn men or Cotton men? are you a magnate of Railroads, or is your word law in the City? then your way is open and your path easy. Without these, or some one of them, you must be a segment of some leading man’s party’.
My own little experience of Parliament—about the very briefest any man can recall—presents little pleasurable in the retrospect. Lord Collyton was one of my Christchurch acquaintances, and at his invitation I spent the autumn of 18— at his father, the Duke of Wrexington’s.
The house was full of company, and, like an English house in such circumstances, the most delightful séjour imaginable. Every second day or so brought a relay of new arrivals, either from town or some other country-house full of the small-talk of the last visit,—all that strange but most amusing farrago which we designate by the humble title of “gossip,” but which, so far as I can judge, is worth ten thousand times more than the boasted causerie of France, and the perpetual effort at smartness so much aimed at by our polite neighbours.
The guests were numerous, and presented specimens of almost every peculiarity observable in Englishmen of a certain class. We had great lords and high court functionaries, deep in the mysteries of Buckingham House and Windsor; a sprinkling of distinguished foreigners; ministers, and secretaries of embassy; some parliamentary leaders, men great on the Treasury benches or strong on the Opposition. Beauties there were too, past, present, and some, coming; a fair share of the notorieties of fashion, and the last winner of the Derby, with—let me not forget him—a Quarterly Reviewer. This last gentleman came with the Marquis of Deepdene, and was, with the exception of a certain pertinacity of manner, a very agreeable person.
Although previously unknown to the host, he had come down “special” under the protection of his friend Lord Deepdene, hoping to secure his grace’s interest in the borough of Collyton, at that time vacant. He was a man of very high attainments, had been an optime at Cambridge, was a distinguished essayist, and his party had conceived the very greatest expectations of his success in Parliament. Of the world, or at least that portion of it that moves upon Tournay carpets, amid Vandykes and Velasquez, with sideboards of gold and lamps of silver, he had not seen much, and learned still less; and it was plain to see that, in the confidence of his own strong head, he was proof against either the seductions of fashion or the sneers of those who might attempt to criticise his breeding.
Before he was twenty-four hours in the house he had corrected his grace in an historical statement, caught up the B—— of D—— in a blunder of prosody, detected a sapphire in Lady Dollington’s suite of yellow diamonds, and exposed an error of Lord Sloperton’s in his pedigree of Brown Menelaus. It is needless to say he was almost universally detested, for of those he had suffered to pass free, none knew how soon his own time might arrive. His patron was miserable; he saw nothing but failure where he looked for triumph. The very acquirements he had built upon for success were become a terror to every one, and “the odious Mr. Kitely” became a proverb. His political opponents chuckled over the “bad tone” of such men in general; the stupid ones gloried over the fall of a clever man; and the malignant part of the household threw out broad hints that he was a mere adventurer, and they should not wonder if actually—— an Irishman! Indeed, he had been heard to say “entirely” twice upon the same evening in conversation, and suspicion had almost become a certainty.
It was towards the end of my first week, as I was one day dressing for dinner, Lord Collyton came hastily into my room, exclaiming, “By Jove, Templeton! Mr. Kitely has done the thing at last, as he would say himself, entirely.”
“How do you mean? what has he done?” “You know my father is excessively vain of his landscape-gardening, and the prodigious improvements which he has made in this same demesne around us. Well, compassionating some one whom Kitely was mangling, ‘more suo’ in an argument, he took that gentleman out for a walk, and, with a conscious pride in his own achievements, led him towards the Swiss cottage beside the waterfall.
“Kitely was pleased with every thing; the timber is really well grown, and he praised it; the view is fine, and he said so. Even of the chalet he condescended a few words of approval, as a feature in the scene. The waterfall, however, he would not praise; it might foam, and splash, and whirl as it would; in vain it threw its tiny spray aloft, and hissed beneath the rocks below; he never wasted even a word upon it.