A sailor carries away from a book he has read a more accurate notion of what is in it than any other class of man of similar intellectual lights and acquirements. As the sailor who has studied his chart by day can see, when approaching an invisible shore through the trackless darkness of water and night, in his mind's eye the shore and the beacons of the shore that still lie hidden below the horizon, so the sailor who has read a book can see that book by aid of the chart he has made of it when the book has been closed up for ever.
As neither father nor son played the fiddle, or carved ivory, or cared much for shooting at bottles in the water, or hunting the great sea-serpent to earth, if the phrase may be allowed, or discovering the North Pole, or exploring cannibal islands, or going in search of novelty in foreign parts, a great deal of their time was spent in reading and fishing. Fishing at sea is not a very high or exciting art. Indeed, it is an art that is almost independent of the artist. And it is almost necessary to have some other occupation at the same time, so that reading goes hand-in-hand with fishing.
Thus it happened that both the Duke and his son read enormous piles of newspapers and books. The Duke read newspapers chiefly, and political books, and articles in the quarterlies. When a young man he had been active in politics, but now he took only a reflected interest in them. He hated Radicals with a complete and abiding hatred. He would root them out of the country at any cost. They disturbed his cities and boroughs. They were a low lot, and never washed their hands.
The Marquis of Southwold, on the contrary, took little or no interest in politics. As far as he had any political feeling, it was against his order and in favour of the Radicals. This feeling he kept to himself, not because he was afraid to put forward anything opposed to his father's views, but because he did not care to speak on a subject he knew so little about. Personally he had a poor opinion of dukes, but they might in reality be better than Radicals for all he knew to the contrary, for he had met two dukes besides his father, but never a Radical. He knew there was a wide gulf between dukes and Radicals. He had an idea a Radical was a kind of political poet. He didn't think much of poets; he knew little of Radicals; and he was perfectly sure dukes were useless. He had a vague general conviction that politicians who were not dukes were fools or rogues, but he was quite sure dukes were supernumeraries without parts in the play of life.
But if he did not care anything about poetry and politics, he was much interested in fiction. One of the few ways open to him, by which he could now and then reduce by a few pounds the balance at his banker's, was in ordering all the new novels which appeared, and ordering them, not at a library, but from the publisher, through his bookseller. Thus while this arrangement existed, every author who got out a novel was sure of finding at least one buyer.
It so happened that in the same month of June Edward Graham set up his easel to paint that landscape under Anerly Bridge, a novel was published called "The Duke of Fenwick: a Romance. By Charles Augustus Cheyne." According to the ordinary rule, the novel had been published in three volumes before it had fully run through the paper in which it appeared from week to week.
The same week the book was published it found its way down to Silverview Castle, and from the Castle to the yacht Seabird, in the hands of George Temple Cheyne, by courtesy called Marquis of Southwold.
The title naturally attracted the nobleman, who had no faith in dukes. He opened the book and found, by a curious coincidence, that the book had been written by a namesake.
"A book by a namesake," thought he; "but by no relative! There never yet was a Cheyne who could write anything more worthy of public notice than 'Trespassers will be prosecuted. Dogs found in these preserves will be shot.'"
But a book by a namesake dealing with a duke was of much more than ordinary interest; so he immediately found the easiest of couches, and lay down under the awning on deck to hear what his namesake had to say about a duke.