Mr. Clutterbuck's Election

by Hilaire Belloc

The season was not yet over. Mrs. Clutterbuck had called upon Mary Smith,—and if my readers will believe me,—Mary Smith had called upon Mrs. Clutterbuck. And there had come a morning—Parliament was still sitting, the Goodwood Cup was not yet collared—when Mrs. Clutterbuck having heard for weeks past from Mr. Clutterbuck hints and guesses at the necessity for a secretary to deal with his now numerous invitations and engagements, quietly suggested Charlie Fitzgerald.

Had she suggested Tolstoi or the German Emperor she could not have surprised him more. But when he heard that the proposition had come from the family itself, that it had been largely due to Mr. Fitzgerald's own pronounced affection, and that he would be content with a nominal salary of £400 or £500 a year, Mr. Clutterbuck, though as much astonished as a man rapt into heaven, was convinced of the reality of the business, and the only thing that troubled him was the question of salary.

He paced up and down the room, suggesting to his wife the dilemma that a sum of £1000 or £1500 a year was all the expense he would hesitate to incur, while less would be an insult he would hesitate to offer. To which her only and sharp reply was that the young man could surely look after himself; that doubtless he had grown used to work of this sort and liked it, that he probably had means of his own, and that, anyhow, it had come from him, and that Mrs. Smith herself had spoken strongly in favour of the arrangement.

How long such a change might last only Fate could tell. It was the middle of the summer. When there were no more dinners to eat and no more women to talk to, Charlie Fitzgerald, all life and boxes, came down to Caterham, but not before going the round of some twenty-eight tradesmen in St. James's Street and Mayfair and assuring them that until the autumn he would be abroad.

With the entry of that vigorous young Irish life into Mr. Clutterbuck's home, began the last adventures of the merchant's singularly adventurous life and his introduction to the conflicting destinies of his country; for even if things had not bent that way, something in Charlie Fitzgerald's nature would have left him restless until he and those for whom he worked had struck some mark.

The young Irishman was the son of that Doctor Fitzgerald the oculist, who had been during all the later years of Queen Victoria's reign a link, as it were, between the professional and the political world of London, and who was himself a younger son of Sir Daniel Fitzgerald, the permanent head of the Fisheries whose name appears so frequently in Lady Cotteswold's Memoirs of Prince Albert and the Queen's early married life. Lady Fitzgerald, his wife, had been a Bailey, and the aunt, therefore, of Mrs. Smith.

It had not been thought necessary to dower her with any portion of the great Bailey fortune, for in those days the Irish land upon which Sir Daniel had foreclosed was a very ample provision even for onerous social duties in London, and the Baileys asked nothing of the eager lover but that he should adopt the name of Fitzgerald which had for centuries been associated with the estate his ardent forethought had acquired.

In those days a change of name demanded certain formalities; these were soon fulfilled, and in Charlie's generation, the third to bear the Irish title and arms, the original form "Daniel Daniels" was justly forgotten.

Since the days of Sir Daniel Irish land has passed through a revolution, especially when it has been held by those whose duties did not necessitate a visit to their estates. Sir Daniel's heir, the oculist's eldest brother, would have died impoverished had not the Government very properly succoured the son of so distinguished a Civil servant and created for him the post of Inspector in the Channel Islands (with the exception of Sark), a district in which he was understood to be present twice or even three times in a year. This salary died of course with its incumbent; his brother, the oculist, had been compelled to spend in hospitality his exceptional earnings, and the present generation of young men, sons of either brother, had had to face life unguarded.