When Adam delved, and Eve span
Who was then the gentleman?
was peculiarly appropriate to this branch, for Jamie, besides being a gardener himself, married the daughter of a Lancashire weaver called Jukes, who later on invented a loom and, what is more, profited by his talent. Although Jamie Grant's rapid rise was helped by the success of old Mr. Jukes' invention, he had enough talent of his own to take full advantage of the capital that his wife brought him on the death of her father; in fact by the year 1837 Jamie was as reputable as any florist in the United Kingdom. A legend in the family said that on the fine June morning when Archbishop Howley and Lord Chamberlain Conyngham rode from the death-bed of William IV at Windsor to announce to the little Princess in Kensington Palace her accession, the Archbishop begged a bunch of sweet peas for his royal mistress from old Jamie whose garden was close to the highway. If legend lied, then so did Jamie's son Andrew, who always declared that he was an eye-witness of the incident, and indeed ascribed to it his own successful career. Inasmuch as Andrew Grant died in the dignity of Lord Bishop Suffragan of Clapham, there is no reason to suppose that he was not speaking the truth. According to him the incident did not stop with the impulse of the loyal Archbishop to stand well with his queen on that sunny morning in June, but a few days later was turned into an event by Jamie's sending his son with another bunch of sweet peas to Lambeth Palace and asking his Grace to stand godfather to a splendid purple variety he had just raised. In these days when sweet peas that do not resemble the underclothing of cocottes without the scent are despised, the robust and strong-scented magenta Archbishop Howley no longer figures in catalogues; but at this period it was the finest sweet pea on the market. The Archbishop, who was a snob of the first water, liked the compliment; yes, and, anti-papist though he was, he did not object to the suggestion of episcopal violet in the dedication. He also liked young Andrew, and on finding that young Andrew wished to cultivate the True Vine instead of the Virginia creeper, he promised him his help and his patronage. James, who all his life had been applying the principle of selection to flowers, realizing that what could be done with sweet peas could be done equally well with human beings, gave Andrew his blessing, dipped into his wife's stocking, and contributed what was necessary to supplement the sizarship that shortly after this his son won at Trinity College, Cambridge.
Andrew Grant, during his career as a clergyman, was called upon to select with even more discrimination and rigour than his father before him. He had first to make up his mind that the Puseyite party was not going to oust the Evangelical party to which he had attached himself. He had later on to decide whether he should anathematize Darwin or uphold Bishop Colenso, a dilemma which he dodged by doing neither. He had also to choose a wife. He chose Martha Rouncivell, who brought him £1000 a year from slum rents in Sheffield and presented him with five children. Apart from the continual assertions of scurrilous High Church papers that he had ceased to believe in his Saviour, Andrew Grant's earthly life was mercifully free from the bitterness, the envy, and the disillusionment that wait upon success. His greatest grief was when the spiritual power that he fancied was perceptible in his youngest son Sholto, a spiritual power that might carry him to Canterbury itself, turned out to be nothing but an early manifestation of the artistic temperament. But that disappointment was mitigated by his consecration in 1890 as Lord Bishop Suffragan of Clapham, in which exalted rank he guarded London against the southerly onslaughts of Satan even as his brothers of Hampstead, Chelsea, and Bow were vigilant North, West, and East. It was a powerful alliance, for if the Bishop of Hampstead was High, the Bishop of Bow was Low, and if the Bishop of Chelsea was Broad, the Bishop of Clapham was Deep; although he preferred to characterize himself as Square.
When Archdeacon Grant was consecrated, he had to find a suitable episcopal residence, and this was not at all easy to find in South London. At last, however, he secured the long lease of a retired merchant's Gothic mansion on Lavender Hill, which after three years of fervid Lenten courses was secured to Holy Church by three appeals to the faithful rich. As soon as the Bishop was firmly installed in Bishop's House, he who had observed with displeasure the number of empty shields in the roll of Suffragan Bishops in Crockford's clergy list, applied for a grant of arms. He came from an old Scots family, and he felt strongly on the subject of coat-armour. When he first went up to Cambridge he had interested himself in heraldry to such purpose that he had been convinced of old Jamie's right to the three antique crowns of the House of Grant. And though the old boy said he should think more of three new half-crowns, he offered to use them as his trade-mark if Andrew really hankered after them. Andrew discouraged the proposed sacrilege, but all the way up from curate to vicar, from vicar to rural dean, from rural dean to archdeacon, from archdeacon to suffragan bishop, he did hanker after them, for the shadows of mighty ancestors loomed immense upon that impenetrable Scotch mist. When his eldest son was born, instead of calling him Matthew after his wife's brother, a safe candidate for future wealth, he called him Hector, because Hector was a fine old Scottish name, and most unevangelically he christened the three sons who followed Eneas, Alexander, and Sholto. When he became a bishop, he was more Caledonian than ever; perhaps the apron reminded him of the kilt. With his empty shield in Crockford's staring at him he went right out for the three antique crowns and applied to Lyon Court for a confirmation of these arms. His mortification may be imagined when he was informed that he was actually not armigerous at all, and that the coat which he proposed to wear, of course with a difference, was not his to wear. It was useless for the Bishop to claim, like Joseph, that the coat had been given to him by his father. The Reubens, Dans, and Naphtalis of the house of Grant were not going to put up with it; the three antique crowns were disallowed. For a while the Bishop pretended to exult in his empty shield. After all, he might hope to become a real bishop and contemplate one day the arms of the see against his name; in any case he felt that his mind should be occupied with a heavenly crown. But the ancestral ghosts haunted him; he could not bear the thought of Crockford's coming out year by year with that empty shield, and at last he applied for arms that should be all his own. On his suggestion Lyon granted him Or, three chaplets of peaseblossom purpure, slipped and leaved vert; but when for crest the Bishop demanded A Bible displayed proper, even that was disallowed, because another branch of the Grants had actually appropriated the Bible in the days of Queen Anne. "Then I will have the Book of Common Prayer displayed proper," said the Bishop. And the Book of Common Prayer he got, together with the Gaelic motto Suas ni bruach, which neither he nor his descendants ever learnt to pronounce properly, though they always understood that it meant something like Excelsior.
With such a motto it was not surprising that Sholto Grant's refusal to climb should upset his relations. Old Jamie must have dealt with many throwbacks when he was selecting his sweet peas; but it is improbable that any of them refused to climb at all, and though there is now a variety inappropriately called "Cupid" with scarcely more ambition than moss, these dwarfs have a commercial value. Sholto Grant had no commercial value. Sholto indeed had so little sense of profit that he actually failed to arrive in time to see his father die, and if the old gentleman's paternal instinct had not been much developed by his episcopate, and if he had not imbibed every evangelical maxim on the subject of forgiveness, he would probably have cut Sholto off with a shilling. As it was, he divided his money equally between his five children, and it can be readily imagined how indignant Hector, Eneas, and Alexander, who had all married well, had all worked hard to justify the family motto, and not one of whom could count on less than £2000 a year, felt on finding that the £20,000; which was all that the Bishop of Clapham's devotion to the Gospel had allowed him to leave to his family, was to be robbed of £4000 for Sholto, who had married an Italian peasant girl and spent his whole life painting unsaleable pictures in the island of Sirene. "Besides," as they acutely said, "Sholto does not appreciate money. He will only go and spend it." And spend it Sholto did, much to the disgust of his brothers, Sir Hector Grant, Bart., K.C.V.O., C.B.; Eneas Grant, Esq., C.M.G.; Lieutenant-Colonel Alexander Grant, D.S.O.; and even of his sister, Mrs. Arnold Lightbody, the wife of the Very Reverend the Dean of Silchester. Thus far had they climbed in the ten years that succeeded the Bishop of Clapham's death. Perhaps if they had reached such altitudes ten years before they might have been more willing to share with Sholto; but Dr. Grant of Harley Street, Mr. Grant of the Levant Consular Service, Captain Grant of the Duke of Edinburgh's Own Strathspey Highlanders (Banffshire Buffs), and Mrs. Lightbody, the wife of Canon Lightbody, were not far enough up the pea-sticks to neglect such a stimulus to growth as gold. Mrs. Hector, Mrs. Eneas, and Mrs. Alexander had their own grievance, for, as they reasonably asked, what had Sholto's wife contributed to the family ascent? They, who had followed the example set by Miss Jukes and Miss Rouncivell before them, were surely entitled to reproach the unendowed Gelsomina. It seemed so extraordinary too that a bishop should have nothing better to occupy a mind on the brink of eternity than speculating whether his youngest son would arrive in time to see him die. They had never yet observed the death of a prelate, but they could imagine well enough what it ought to be to know that a continental Bradshaw was not the book to prepare for a heavenly journey. And when a double knock sounded on the studded door of Bishop's House, the Bishop had actually sat up in bed, because he thought that it was his youngest son, arrived in time after all. But it was not Sholto, and the old man had had no business to sit up in bed and grab at the telegram like that. "Wife dying in Paris forgive delay," he read out, gasping. After which with a smile he murmured, "Perhaps I shall meet poor Sholto's wife above," and without another word died. It was all very well for the chaplain to fold his arms upon his breast, but the assembled family felt that a bishop ought to have died in the hope of meeting his Maker, not an Italian daughter-in-law of peasant extraction.
During the ten years that had elapsed since then, Sholto had behaved exactly as his family had foreseen that he would behave. He had lost his wife, his money, and then most carelessly his own life, leaving an orphan to be provided for by her relatives. Luckily Sir Hector Grant, because he was the head of the family and because he had climbed a little higher than the rest, was willing to see what could be done with and what could be made of poor Sholto's daughter. Not that the others were slow in coming forward with offers of hospitality. Their letters to Jasmine were a proof of that. But they all felt that Strathspey House was the obvious place for the experiment to begin.
Strathspey House occupied what is called a commanding position on the fashionable South Cliff of Spaborough, looking seaward over the shrubberies of the Spa gardens. Sir Hector Grant had bought it about fifteen years ago, to the relief of the many ladies whom in a professional capacity he had advised to recuperate their nerves at the famous old resort. That trip to Spaborough had become such a recognized formula in his consultations that it would hardly have been decent for Dr. Grant himself to seek anywhere else recreation from his practice. In his Harley Street consulting room a coloured print of the eighteenth century entitled A Trip to Spaborough hung above the green marble clock that had been presented to him by a ruling sovereign for keeping his oldest daughter moderately sane long enough to marry the son of another ruling sovereign, and, what is more, cheat an heir presumptive with an heir apparent. In the caricaturist's representation a line of monstrously behooped and bewigged ladies and of gentlemen with bulbous red noses stood upon a barren cliff gazing at the sea. "Even in those days," Dr. Grant used to murmur, "you see, my dear lady ... yes ... even in those days ... but of course it's not quite like that now. No, it's—not—quite—like—that—now." The neurasthenic lady would certainly have made the prescribed trip even if it had been; but before she could express her complete subservience Dr. Grant would go on: "Air ... yes, precisely ... that's what you require ... air!... plenty of good—fresh—air! Bathing? Perhaps. That we shall have to settle later on. Yes, a little—later—on." And Dr. Grant's patients were usually so much braced up by their visit that they would begin telegraphing to him at all hours of the day and night to find out the precise significance of various symptoms unnoticed before the cure began to work its wonders.
But the claims of exigent ladies were not the only reason that determined Dr. Grant to acquire a house at the seaside. As a prophylactic against his two daughters', Lettice and Pamela, ever reaching the condition in which the majority of his female patients found themselves, their mother, who had an even keener instinct than her husband for the mode, suggested that he should build a house in the country, choosing a design that could be added to year by year as his fame and fortune increased. But when Mrs. Grant suggested building, the doctor replied, "Fools, May, build houses for wise men to live in," and forthwith bought Strathspey House to conclude the discussion. In this case the fool was a Huddersfield manufacturer whose fortunes had collapsed in some industrial earthquake and left him saddled with a double-fronted, four-storied, porticoed house, in which he had planned to meditate for many years on a successful business career put behind him. Actually he spent his declining years in a small boarding-house on the unfashionable north side of Spaborough, where he existed in a miserable obscurity, except as often as he could persuade a fellow-pensioner to walk with him all the way up to South Parade for the purpose of admiring the exterior of the house that had once been his—a habit, by the way, that vexed the new owner extremely, but for which, under the laws of England, he could discover no satisfactory remedy.
It is scarcely necessary to add that the Huddersfield manufacturer never called it Strathspey House. That was Dr. Grant's way of saying "My heart's in the Highlands a-chasing the deer," for it was down the dim glens of Strathspey that the prehistoric Grants had hunted in the mists of antiquity.
Although Mrs. Grant had never tried to persuade her husband into anything like the baronial castle that would have so well become him, she had never ceased to protest against a country seat in a popular seaside resort; but she had to wait fifteen years before she was able to say "I told you so" with perfect assurance that her husband would have to bow his head in acknowledgment of her clearer foresight. The actual date of her triumph was the first of August in the year before Jasmine's arrival, when the very next house in South Parade, separated from Strathspey House by nothing but a yard of sky and a hedge of ragged aucubas, was turned into a boarding-house and actually called Holyrood. Sir Hector Grant, K.C.V.O., C.B., would have found the proximity of a boarding-house irritating enough as he was; but a few months later he was created a baronet, and what had been merely irritating became intolerable. How could he advertise himself in Debrett as Sir Hector Grant, of Strathspey House, Spaborough, when next door was a boarding establishment called Holyrood? And if he described himself as Sir Hector Grant, of Harley Street, Borough of Marylebone, all the flavour would be taken out of the fine old Highland name and title. There was only one course of action. He must change Strathspey House to Balmoral, sell it to another boarding establishment, remove A Trip to Spaborough from his consulting room, buy a small glen in Banff or Elgin with a good Gaelic sound to its name, and send his patients to Strathpeffer. Yet after all, why should he bother? He had no male heir. What did it matter if he was Sir Hector Grant, of Harley Street, Borough of Marylebone? Sir Hector Grant, Bt., was good enough for anybody; he need not waste his money on glens. If old Uncle Matthew Rouncivell died soon and left him his fortune, and the old miser owed as much to his nephew's title, he should be able to buy a castle and retire from practice. Meanwhile his business was to make the most of that title while he was alive to enjoy it.