THE BEST BAT IN THE SCHOOL.
“It is the best bat in the school. I call it Mercandotti, for its shape. Look at its face; run your hand over the plane. It is smoother than a looking-glass. I was a month suiting myself, and I chose it out of a hundred. I would not part with it for its weight in gold; and that exquisite knot! lovelier, to me, than a beauty’s dimple. You may fancy how that drives. I hit a ball yesterday from this very spot to the wickets in the Upper Shooting Fields; six runs clear, and I scarcely touched it. Hodgson said it was not the first time that a ball had been wonderfully struck by Mercandotti! There is not such another piece of wood in England. Collyer would give his ears for it; and that would be a long price, as Golightly says. Do take it in your hand, Courtenay; but, plague on your clumsy knuckles! You know as much of a bat as a Hottentot of the longitude or a guinea-pig of the German flute!”
So spoke the Honourable Ernest Adolphus Volant, the decus columenque that day of his Dame’s Eleven; proud of the red silk that girded his loins, and the white hose that decorated his ankles; proud of his undisputed prowess, and of his anticipated victory; but prouder far of the possession of this masterpiece of nature’s and Thompson’s workshop, than which no pearl was ever more precious, no phœnix more unique. As he spoke, a bail dropped. The Honourable Ernest Adolphus Volant walked smilingly to the vacant wicket. What elegance in his attitude! What ease in his motions! Keep that little colleger out of the way, for we shall have the ball walking this road presently. Three to one on Ragueneau’s! Now! There was a moment’s pause of anxious suspense. The long fag rubbed his hands, and drew up his shirt-sleeves; the wicket-keeper stooped expectantly over the bails; the bowler trotted leisurely up to the bowling crease, and off went the ball upon its successive errands; from the hand of the bowler to the[Pg 285] exquisite knot in the bat of the Honourable Ernest Adolphus Volant, from the said exquisite knot to the unerring fingers of the crouching Long Nips, and from those fingers up into the blue firmament of heaven with the velocity of a sky-rocket. What a mistake! How did he manage it? His foot slipped, or the ball was twisted, or the sun dazzled him. It could not be the fault of the bat; it is the best bat in the school!
A week afterwards I met my talented and enthusiastic friend crawling to absence through the playing-fields, as tired as a posthorse, and as hot as a salamander, with many applauding associates on his right and on his left, who exhibited to him certain pencilled scrawls, on which he gazed with flushed and feverish delight. He had kept his wicket up two hours, and made a score of seventy-three. “I may thank my bat for it,” quoth he, shouldering it as Hercules might have shouldered his club; “it is the best bat in the school!” Alas for the instability of human affections! The exquisite knot had been superseded. Mercandotti had been sold for half-price, and the Honourable Ernest Adolphus Volant was again to be eloquent, and again to be envied; he had still the best bat in the school.
I believe I was a tolerably good-natured boy. I am sure I was always willing to acquiesce in the estimation my companions set upon their treasures, because they were generally such that I felt myself a vastly inadequate judge of their actual value. But the Honourable Ernest Adolphus Volant was exorbitant in the frequency and variety of his drafts upon my sympathy. He turned off five hockey-sticks in a fortnight; and each in its turn was unrivalled. He wore seven waistcoats in a week, and each for its brief day was as single in its beauty as the rainbow. In May, Milward’s shoes were unequalled; in June, Ingalton’s were divine. He lounged in Poet’s Walk over a duodecimo, and it was the sweetest edition that ever went into a waistcoat-pocket; he pored in his study over a folio, and there was no other copy extant but Lord Spencer’s and the mutilated one at Heidelberg. At Easter there were portraits hanging round his room; Titian never painted their equal. At[Pg 286] Michaelmas, landscapes had occupied their place; Claude would have owned himself outdone. The colt they were breaking for him in Leicestershire, the detonator he had bespoken of Charles Moore, the fishing-rod which had come from Bermuda, the flageolet he had won at the raffle—they were all, for a short season, perfection; he had always “the best bat in the school.”
The same whimsical propensity followed him through life. Four years after we had made our last voyage to Monkey Island in “the best skiff that ever was built,” I found him exhibiting himself in Hyde Park on “the best horse that ever was mounted.” A minute was sufficient for the compliments of our reciprocal recognition, and the Honourable Ernest Adolphus Volant launched out forthwith into a rhapsody on the merits of the proud animal he bestrode. “Kremlin, got by Smolensko, out of my uncle’s old mare. Do you know anything of a horse? Look at his shoulder! Upon my honour, it is a model for a sculptor. And feel how he is ribbed up; not a pin loose here; knit together like a ship’s planks; trots fourteen miles an hour without turning a hair, and carries fifteen stone up to any hounds in England. I hate your smart dressy creatures, as slender as a greyhound and as tender as a gazelle, that look as if they had been stabled in drawing-rooms and taken their turn with the poodle in my lady’s lap. I like to have plenty of bone under me. If this horse had been properly ridden, Courtenay, he would have won the Hunters’ Stakes at our place in a canter. He has not a leg that is not worth a hundred pounds. Seriously, I think there is not such another horse in the kingdom.”
But before a month had gone by, the Honourable Ernest Adolphus Volant was ambling down the ride in a pair of stirrups far more nearly approaching terra firma than those in which his illustrious feet had been reclining while he held forth on the excellences of Kremlin. “Oh yes,” he said, when I inquired after “the best horse in England,” “Kremlin is a magnificent animal; but then, after all, his proper place is with the hounds. One might as well wear one’s scarlet in a ball-room as ride Kremlin in the Park. And so I have bought Mrs. Davenant’s Bijou—and a perfect[Pg 287] bijou she is; throws out her little legs like an opera-dancer, and tosses her head as if she knew that her neck is irresistible. You will not find such another mane and tail in all London. Mrs. Davenant’s own maid used to put up both in papers every night of the week. She is quite a love!” And so the Honourable Ernest Adolphus Volant trotted off, on a smart dressy creature, as slender as a greyhound and as tender as a gazelle, that looked as if it had been stabled in a drawing-room and taken a turn with the poodle in my lady’s lap.
An analysis of the opinions of my eccentric friend would be an entertaining thing. “The best situation in town” has been found successively in nearly every street between the Regent’s Park and St. James’s Square; “the best carriage for a bachelor” has gone to-day on two wheels and to-morrow on four; “the best servant in Christendom” has been turned off, within my own knowledge, for insolence, for intoxication, for riding his master’s horse, and for riding his master’s inexplicables; and “the best fellow in the world” has been at various periods deep in philosophy and deep in debt—a frequenter of the Fives Court and a dancer of quadrilles—a Tory and a Republican—a prebendary and a Papist—a drawer of dry pleadings and a singer of sentimental serenades. If I had acted upon Volant’s advice, I should have been to-day subscribing to every club and taking in every newspaper; I should have been imbibing the fluids of nine wine merchants, and covering my outward man with the broadcloth of thirteen tailors.
It is a pity that Volant has been prevented by indolence, a doting mother, and four thousand a year, from applying his energies to the attainment of any professional distinction. In a variety of courses he might have commanded success. A cause might have come into court stained and spotted with every conceivable infamy, with effrontery for its crest, falsehood for its arms, and perjuries for its supporters; but if Volant had been charged with the advocacy of it, his delighted eye would have winked at every deficiency, and slumbered at every fault; in his sight weakness would have sprung up into strength, deformity would have faded into beauty, impossibility would have been[Pg 288] sobered into fact. Every plaintiff, in his showing, would have been wronged irreparably; every defendant would have been as unsullied as snow. His would have been the most irreproachable of declarations, his the most impregnable of pleas. The reporters might have tittered, the bar might have smiled, the bench might have shaken its heads; nothing would have persuaded him that he was beaten. He would have thought the battle won, when his lines were forced at all points; he would have deemed the house secure, when the timbers were creaking under his feet. It would have been delicious, when his strongest objection had been overruled, when his clearest argument had been stopped, when his stoutest witness had broken down, to see him adjusting his gown with a self-satisfied air, and concluding with all the emphasis of anticipated triumph, “That is my case, my Lord!”