This family tree is now so well established that a full publication of the lineage, with a commentary upon the whole romantic story, is about to appear in one of the reviews from the pen of “Thersites,” a pseudonym which, as many of our readers are aware, barely hides the identity of one of our best-known experts upon Foreign Affairs.[1]
Mr. Hopper did not remain in London beyond the close of the season. He had proposed to leave for Biskra a week or so after I made his acquaintance, but the change in the weather decided him to go no farther south than Palermo, whence he will return by Naples, Rome, Assisi, Genoa, and Boulogne, visiting on the way the quaint old city of Strasbourg. He will reach England again some time in the month of April, 1910, and on his return he proposes to devote some part of his considerable fortune to the erection of a suitable monument at Stratford-on-Avon in memory of his great ancestor. This generous gift will be accompanied by certain conditions, but there is little doubt that the town will accept the same, and that a fine fountain surrounded with symbolical figures of Justice, Prudence, and Mercy, and adorned with medallions of Queens Elizabeth and Victoria, George Washington and President Roosevelt, will soon adorn the quiet little Warwickshire town.
Mr. Hopper also proposes to found a Shakespeare Scholarship at Sidney-Sussex College in Cambridge, and another at Wadham College in Oxford, each of the value of £300 a year, on the model of the Rhodes Scholarships, such scholarships to be granted not merely for book work but for business capacity and physical development. He has also planned a Chair for the propagation of Shakespearean knowledge in Glasgow, and he will endow a Reader in Shakespeare to the University of Aberdeen.
Mr. Hopper is himself no mean littérateur, though a characteristic modesty has hitherto restrained him from publishing his verse, whether rhyme, blank, or in sonnet form. It is possible that now he is acquainted with his great descent his reluctance may be overcome and he may think better of this decision. I may add that Mr. Hopper places no credence in the Baconian theory, and hopes by diligent search among his family papers to prove the authenticity of at least the five major tragedies and A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Mr. Hopper is a total abstainer; he neither smokes nor chews; his religious views, always broad and tolerant, incline him strongly towards the New Theology, and, in common with many other men of exceptional intelligence, he has been profoundly affected by the popular translation of Dr. Haeckel’s Riddle of the Universe.
Though delighting in social intercourse, Mr. Hopper has the true gentleman’s instinct against being lionised, and in particular stands in dread of the Duchess of Dundee. He has therefore begged me to insist as little as possible on his identity in anything I thought it my duty to record in print upon so interesting a matter, and I have so far acceded to his request as to have refrained from publishing these lines until he had left our shores; but I make little doubt that on his return in the spring this missing link between the two branches of the Anglo-Saxon kin cannot but receive the public recognition he deserves.