Dr. Biddlecup was an old man and may not have been accurate in his historical pretensions, but the main truth of what he said was certain, for Joseph resembled the great statesman at once in his physical appearance, for he was sallow and had a turned-up nose: in his gifts: in his oratory which was ever remarkable at the social clubs and wines—and alas! in his fondness for port.
Indeed, little Joseph had to pay the price of concentrating in himself the genius of three generations, he suffered more than one of the temptations that assault men of vigorous imagination. He kept late hours, drank—perhaps not always to excess but always over-frequently—and gambled, if not beyond his means, at least with a feverish energy that was ruinous to his health. He fell desperately ill in the fortnight before his schools, but he was granted an aegrotat, a degree equivalent in his case to a First Class in Honours, and he was asked by one or other of the Colleges to compete for a Fellowship; it was, however, given to another candidate.
After this failure he went home, and on his father's advice, attempted political work; but the hurry and noise of an election disgusted him, and it is feared that his cynical and highly epigrammatic speeches were another cause of his defeat.
Sir William Mackle, who had watched the boy with the tenderest interest and listened to his fancied experiences with a father's patience, ordered complete rest and change, and recommended the South of France; he was sent thither with a worthless friend or rather dependent, who permitted the lad to gamble and even to borrow money, and it was this friend to whom Sir William (in his letter to the Honourable Mr. Duggleton acknowledging receipt of his cheque) attributed the tragedy that followed.
"Had he not," wrote the distinguished physician, "permitted our poor Joseph to borrow money of him; had he resolutely refused to drink wine at dinner; had he locked Joseph up in his room every evening at the opening hour of the Casino, we should not have to deplore the loss of one of England's noblest." Nor did the false friend make things easier for the bereaved father by suggesting ere twelve short months had elapsed that the sums Joseph had borrowed of him should be repaid.
Joseph, one fatal night, somewhat heated by wine, had heard a Frenchman say to an Italian at his elbow certain very outrageous things about one Mazzini. The pair were discussing a local bookmaker, but the boy, whose passion for Italian unity is now well known, imagined that the Philosopher and Statesman was in question; he fell into such a passion and attacked these offensive foreigners with such violence as to bring on an attack from which he did not recover: his grave now whitens the hillside of the Monte Resorto (in French Mont-resort).
He left some fifty short poems in the manner of Shelley, Rossetti and Swinburne, and a few in an individual style that would surely have developed with age. These have since been gathered into a volume and go far to prove the truth of his father's despairing cry: "Joseph," the poor man sobbed as he knelt by the insanitary curtained bed on which the body lay, "Joseph would have done for the name of Duggleton in literature what my Uncle did for it in politics."
His portrait may be found in Annals of the Rutlandshire Gentry, a book recently published privately by subscriptions of two guineas, payable to the gentleman who produced that handsome volume.
ON A LOST MANUSCRIPT
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