but a sportsman as well as a scholar, a man of the world as well as a man of letters; given overmuch to betting, horse-racing, and dissipation in general, but with as keen a zest for the elegances of literature as for those beauties of the drama to which he pays fully more attention, and one who can compute you the odds as readily as he can turn a lyric or round a flowing period. Had his lordship possessed a little more common sense and a slight modicum of prudence, forethought, reflection, and such plebeian qualities, he need not have failed in any one thing he undertook. As it was, his best friends regretted he should waste his talents so unsparingly on versification; whilst his enemies (the bitter dogs) averred “Mount Helicon’s rhyme was, if possible, worse than his reason.” Being member for Guyville (our readers will probably call to mind how the columns of their daily paper were filled with the Guyville Election Committee’s Report, and the wonderful appetite for “treating” displayed by the “free and independent” of that town during their “three glorious days”)—being member, then, of course it is incumbent on him to attend the ball; so after a hurried dinner with Lacquers, Sir Ascot, Major D’Orville, and sundry other gentlemen who live every day of their lives, behold him curling his red whiskers and attiring his tall, gaunt form in a suit of decorous black.
“Deuced bad dinner they give one here,” said his lordship to himself, still hammering away at the ode. “Wish I hadn’t drunk that second bottle of claret, and smoked so much.
When the thunders of a people smite the quailing despot’s ear,
And the earthquake of rebellion heaves—
No, I can’t get it right. How those cursed fiddlers are scraping! and either that glass maligns me, or I look a little drunk! This life don’t suit my style of beauty—something must be done. Shall I marry and pull up? Marry—will I! Bow my cultivated intellect before some savage maiden, and fatten like a tethered calf on the flat swamps of domestic respectability. Straps! go down and find out if many of the people are come.”
“Several of the townspeople have arrived, my lord; but few of the county families as yet,” replies Straps, whose knowledge of a member of parliament’s duties would have qualified him to represent Guyville as well as his master. Lord Mount Helicon accordingly completes his toilet and proceeds to the ball-room, still mentally harping on “the thunders of a people,” and “the quailing despot’s ear.”
The townspeople have indeed arrived in very sufficient numbers, yet is there a strong line of demarcation between their plebeian ranks and those of “the county families” huddled together at the upper end of the room. Britannia! Britannia! when will you cease to bring your coat-of-arms into society, and to smother your warm heart and sociable nature under pedigrees, and rent-rolls, and dreary conventionalities? When you do, you will enjoy yourself all the more, and be respected none the less. You will be equally efficient as a chaperon, though the trident be not always pointed on the defensive; and the lion may be an excellent watch-dog, without being trained to growl at every fellow-creature who does not happen to keep a carriage. His lordship’s business, however, lies chiefly with those, so to speak, below the salt. Voters are they, or, more important still, voters’ wives and daughters, and, as such, must be propitiated; for Mount Helicon, we need scarcely inform our readers, is not an English peerage, and my lord may probably require to sit again for the same incorruptible borough.
So he bows to this lady, and flirts with that, and submits to be patted on the shoulder and twaddled to by a fat little man, primed with port, but who, when not thus bemused, is an influential member of his committee, and a staunch supporter on the hustings. Nay more, with an effort that he deserves infinite credit for concealing with such good grace, he offers his arm to the red-haired daughter of his literally warm supporter, and leads the well-pleased damsel, blushing much, and mindful “to keep her head up,” right away to the county families’ quadrille at the top of the room, where she dances vis-à-vis—actually vis-à-vis—to Miss Kettering and Captain Lacquers.
That gentleman is considerably brightened up by his dinner and his potations. He has besides got his favourite boots on, and feels equal to almost any social emergency, so he is making the agreeable to the heiress with that degree of originality so peculiarly his own, and getting on, as he thinks, “like a house on fire.”