It is a wonder what human nature will support: and that, considering the amount of flattery some people are crammed with from their cradles, they do not grow worse and more selfish than they are. Our poor little pauper just mentioned is dosed with Daffy’s Elixir, and somehow survives the drug. Princekin or lordkin from his earliest days has nurses, dependants, governesses, little friends, schoolfellows, schoolmasters, fellow-collegians, college tutors, stewards and valets, led captains of his suite, and women innumerable flattering him and doing him honour. The tradesman’s manner, which to you and me is decently respectful, becomes straightway frantically servile before Princekin. Honest folks at railway stations whisper to their families, “That’s the Marquis of Farintosh,” and look hard at him as he passes. Landlords cry, “This way, my lord; this room for your lordship.” They say at public schools Princekin is taught the beauties of equality, and thrashed into some kind of subordination. Psha! Toad-eaters in pinafores surround Princekin. Do not respectable people send their children so as to be at the same school with him; don’t they follow him to college, and eat his toads through life?
And as for women—oh, my dear friends and brethren in this vale of tears—did you ever see anything so curious, monstrous, and amazing as the way in which women court Princekin when he is marriageable, and pursue him with their daughters? Who was the British nobleman in old old days who brought his three daughters to the King of Mercia, that His Majesty might choose one after inspection? Mercia was but a petty province, and its king in fact a Princekin. Ever since those extremely ancient and venerable times the custom exists not only in Mercia, but in all the rest of the provinces inhabited by the Angles, and before Princekins the daughters of our nobles are trotted out.
There was no day of his life which our young acquaintance, the Marquis of Farintosh, could remember on which he had not been flattered; and no society which did not pay him court. At a private school he could recollect the master’s wife stroking his pretty curls and treating him furtively to goodies; at college he had the tutor simpering and bowing as he swaggered over the grass-plat; old men at clubs would make way for him and fawn on him—not your mere pique-assiettes and penniless parasites, but most respectable toad-eaters, fathers of honest families, gentlemen themselves of good station, who respected this young gentleman as one of the institutions of their country, and the admired wisdom of the nation that set him to legislate over us. When Lord Farintosh walked the streets at night, he felt himself like Haroun Alraschid—(that is, he would have felt so had he ever heard of the Arabian potentate)—a monarch in disguise affably observing and promenading the city. And let us be sure there was a Mesrour in his train to knock at the doors for him and run the errands of this young caliph. Of course he met with scores of men in life who neither flattered him nor would suffer his airs; but he did not like the company of such, or for the sake of truth undergo the ordeal of being laughed at; he preferred toadies, generally speaking. “I like,” says he, “you know, those fellows who are always saying pleasant things, you know, and who would run from here to Hammersmith if I asked ’em—much better than those fellows who are always making fun of me, you know.” A man of his station who likes flatterers need not shut himself up; he can get plenty of society.
As for women, it was his lordship’s opinion that every daughter of Eve was bent on marrying him. A Scotch marquis, an English earl, of the best blood in the empire, with a handsome person, and a fortune of fifteen thousand a year, how could the poor creatures do otherwise than long for him? He blandly received their caresses; took their coaxing and cajolery as matters of course; and surveyed the beauties of his time as the Caliph the moonfaces of his harem. My lord intended to marry certainly. He did not care for money, nor for rank; he expected consummate beauty and talent, and some day would fling his handkerchief to the possessor of these, and place her by his side upon the Farintosh throne.
At this time there were but two or three young ladies in society endowed with the necessary qualifications, or who found favour in his eyes. His lordship hesitated in his selection from these beauties. He was not in a hurry, he was not angry at the notion that Lady Kew (and Miss Newcome with her) hunted him. What else should they do but pursue an object so charming? Everybody hunted him. The other young ladies, whom we need not mention, languished after him still more longingly. He had little notes from these; presents of purses worked by them, and cigar-cases embroidered with his coronet. They sang to him in cosy boudoirs—mamma went out of the room, and sister Ann forgot something in the drawing-room. They ogled him as they sang. Trembling they gave him a little foot to mount them, that they might ride on horseback with him. They tripped along by his side from the Hall to the pretty country church on Sundays. They warbled hymns: sweetly looking at him the while mamma whispered confidentially to him, “What an angel Cecilia is!” And so forth, and so forth—with which chaff our noble bird was by no means to be caught. When he had made up his great mind, that the time was come and the woman, he was ready to give a Marchioness of Farintosh to the English nation.
Miss Newcome has been compared ere this to the statue of “Huntress Diana” at the Louvre, whose haughty figure and beauty the young lady indeed somewhat resembled. I was not present when Diana and Diana’s grandmother hunted the noble Scottish stag of whom we have just been writing; nor care to know how many times Lord Farintosh escaped, and how at last he was brought to bay and taken by his resolute pursuers. Paris, it appears, was the scene of his fall and capture. The news was no doubt well known amongst Lord Farintosh’s brother-dandies, among exasperated matrons and virgins in Mayfair, and in polite society generally, before it came to simple Tom Newcome and his son. Not a word on the subject had Sir Barnes mentioned to the Colonel: perhaps not choosing to speak till the intelligence was authenticated; perhaps not wishing to be the bearer of tidings so painful.
Though the Colonel may have read in his Pall Mall Gazette a paragraph which announced an approaching MARRIAGE IN HIGH LIFE, “between a noble young marquis and an accomplished and beautiful young lady, daughter and sister of a Northern baronet,” he did not know who were the fashionable persons about to be made happy, nor, until he received a letter from an old friend who lived at Paris, was the fact conveyed to him. Here is the letter preserved by him along with all that he ever received from the same hand:—
“Rue St. Dominique, St. Germain, Paris, 10 Fev.
“So behold you of return, my friend! you quit for ever the sword and those arid plains where you have passed so many years of your life, separated from those to whom, at the commencement, you held very nearly. Did it not seem once as if two hands never could unlock, so closely were they enlaced together? Ah, mine are old and feeble now; forty years have passed since the time when you used to say they were young and fair. How well I remember me of every one of those days, though there is a death between me and them, and it is as across a grave I review them! Yet another parting, and tears and regrets are finished. Tenez, I do not believe them when they say there is no meeting for us afterwards, there above. To what good to have seen you, friend, if we are to part here, and in Heaven too? I have not altogether forgotten your language, is it not so? I remember it because it was yours, and that of my happy days. I radote like an old woman as I am. M. de Florac has known my history from the commencement. May I not say that after so many of years I have been faithful to him and to all my promises? When the end comes with its great absolution, I shall not be sorry. One supports the combats of life, but they are long, and one comes from them very wounded; ah, when shall they be over?
“You return and I salute you with wishes for parting. How much egotism! I have another project which I please myself to arrange. You know how I am arrived to love Clive as own my child. I very quick surprised his secret, the poor boy, when he was here it is twenty months. He looked so like you as I repeal me of you in the old time! He told me he had no hope of his beautiful cousin. I have heard of the fine marriage that one makes her. Paul, my son, has been at the English Ambassade last night and has made his congratulations to M. de Farintosh. Paul says him handsome, young, not too spiritual, rich, and haughty, like all, all noble Montagnards.