In the second generation, his grand-daughters Rachel Martin of the elder branch and Marie Priaulx of the younger, contended at law for the inheritance after some intestacy: and a terrible lawsuit raged in Chancery for 150 years, between the Tuppers and the Benyons,—and was carried even to the House of Lords, being finally decided in my memory for the Benyons. I remember my uncle saying he would not take thirty thousand pounds for his individual chance,—but my less sanguine father cared not to join in the lawsuit,—saying he would not "throw good money after bad." For my own judgment, and I can speak as an old conveyancing barrister (though without business or experience) of nearly fifty years' standing, our side as the elder had the best right, though the two sisters might well and wisely have shared in a compromise. But somehow it came to be decided that the younger claimant of that vast property must have all,—and the elder be strangely left out in the cold. After the conclusion of the Lords, further litigation was hopeless: so those whom I now represent (as almost the "last of the Abruzzi") must acquiesce in getting nothing, while the opponent side has the good luck to possess, as Dr. Johnson has it, "wealth beyond the dreams of avarice." Such is life,—and law: the most obstinate and the richest win: the less pertinacious and the poorer are allowed to fail: it is a process of Darwin's survival of the fittest. All this is now "too late to mend:" but I do hope that if ever I go to Engelfield Castle, Sir Richard will be kindly and genial to his far-off cousin, who (but for some legal quibble unknown) might have dispossessed him.
My father numbered among his patients the Duke of Rutland, and I have heard him say that they half-humorously called each other cousins.
A Lost Chance in Belgravia.
In this connection of possible good luck that never happened, let me record this.
Another of my father's patients was the long deceased Earl Grosvenor, grandfather of the present Duke of Westminster; and about him I have a tale to tell, which shows how nearly we might have been possessed of another vast property—but we missed it. One day in my boyhood, I remember my father coming home after his round and telling my mother that he had a great mind to buy "the five fields" of Lord Grosvenor's, because he thought London might extend that way. Those five fields are now covered with the palatial streets of Belgravia,—but were then a dismal marshy flat intersected by black ditches, and notorious for highway robbery, as a district dimly lit with an oil lamp here and there, and protected by nothing but the useless old watchman in his box: it is the tract of land between Grosvenor Place and Sloane Street. His lordship had a reputation for parsimony, and he fancied it a bargain if he could sell to my father those squalid fields for £2000,—so he offered them to him at that price. When my mother heard of this, she was dead against so extravagant an outlay for that desolate region; so much dreaded by her whenever her aunt's black horses in the old family coach ploughed their way through the slush (MacAdam had not then arisen to give us granite roads) to call on an ancient relative, Mr. Hall, who possessed a priceless cupboard of old Chelsea china, and lived near the hospital. A tradition existed that the said family waggon had once been "stopped" thereabouts by some vizored knight of the road, and this memory confirmed my mother's disapproval of the purchase. So my father was dissuaded, and declined the Earl's offer. I don't suppose that if he had accepted it the property would long have been his, but must have changed hands directly he had doubled his investment: otherwise, imagine what a bargain was there!—However, nobody can foresee anything beyond an inch or a minute, and so this other chance of "wealth beyond the dreams of avarice" long ago faded away.
CHAPTER XLVII.
FLYING.
A lecture which I gave at the Royal Aquarium on September 28, 1883, on the Art of Human Flight, attracted at the time a good deal of newspaper notice; my friend Colonel Fred. Burnaby being in the chair, supported by several other aeronautical notables. From a rough copy by me I have thought fit to preserve the exordium here, just as spoken.