Or if he had coveted senatorial fame, what a space would he have filled in the political hemisphere! If he had introduced a Turnpike Bill, the House would have forgotten Emancipation for a time; if he had moved the committal of a printer, Europe would have gazed as upon the arrest of a peer of the realm. The Minister he supported would have been the most virtuous of statesmen when both Houses had voted his impeachment; the gentlemen he represented would have been the most virtuous of constituents when they had sold him their voices at five per cent. over the market price.
Destiny ordered it otherwise. One day, in that sultry season of the year when fevers and flirtations come to their crisis, and matrimony and hydrophobia scare you at every corner, I happened to call at his rooms in Regent Street, at about that time in the afternoon which the fashionable world calls daybreak. He was sitting with his chocolate before him, habited only in his robe de chambre; but the folds of that joyous drapery seemed to me composed in a more studied negligence than was their wont, and the dark curls upon his fine forehead were arranged in a more scrupulous disorder. I saw at a glance that some revolution was breaking out in the state of my poor friend’s mind; and when I found a broken fan on the mantelpiece and a[Pg 289] withered rosebud on the sofa, Walker’s Lexicon open on the writing-table and an unfinished stanza reposing on the toast-rack, I was no longer in doubt as to its nature; the Honourable Ernest Adolphus Volant was seriously in love.
It was not to be wondered at that his mistress was the loveliest being of her sex, nor that he told me so fourteen times in the following week. Her father was a German prince, the proprietor of seven leagues of vineyard, five ruined castles, and three hundred flocks of sheep. She had light hair, blue eyes, and a profound knowledge of metaphysics; she sang like a siren, and her name was Adelinda.
I spent a few months abroad. When I returned, he was married to the loveliest being of her sex, and had sent me fifty notes to inform me of the fact and beseech me to visit him at Volant Hall, with the requisite quantity of sympathy and congratulation. I went, and was introduced in form. Her father was a country clergyman, the proprietor of seven acres of glebe, five broken armchairs, and three hundred manuscript discourses; she had dark hair, black eyes, and a fond love of poetry; she danced like a wood-nymph, and her name was Mary.
He has lived since his marriage a very quiet life, rarely visiting the metropolis, and devoting his exertions most indefatigably to the comfort of his tenantry and the improvement of his estate. Volant Hall is deliciously situated in the best county in England. If you go thither, you must go prepared with the tone, or at least with the countenance, of approbation and wonder. He gives you, of course, mutton such as no other pasture fattens, and ale such as no other cellar brews. The stream that runs through his park supplies him with trout of unprecedented beauty and delicacy; and he could detect a partridge that had feasted in his woods amidst the bewildering confusion of a Lord Mayor’s banquet. You must look at his conservatory; no other was ever constructed on the same principle. You must handle his plough; he himself has obtained a patent for the invention. Everything, within doors and without, has wherewithal to attract and astonish;[Pg 290] the melon and the magnolia, the stable and the dairy, the mounting of his mother’s spectacles and the music of his wife’s piano. He has few pictures, but they are the masterpieces of the best masters. He has only one statue, but he assures you that it is Canova’s chef-d’œuvre. The last time I was with him, he had a theme to descant upon which made his eloquence more than usually impassioned. An heir was just born to the Volant acres. An ox was roasted, and a barrel pierced in every meadow; the noise of fiddles was incessant for a week, and the expenditure of powder would have lasted a Lord High Admiral for a twelvemonth. It was allowed by all the county that there never was so sweet a child as little Adolphus.
Among his acquaintance, who have generally little toleration for any foibles but their own, Volant is pretty generally voted a bore.
“Of course our pinery is not like Mr. Volant’s,” says Lady Framboise; “he is prating from morning to night of his fires and flues. We have taken some pains, and we pay a ruinous sum to our gardener, but we never talk about it.”
“The deuce take that fellow Volant,” says Mr. Crayon, “does he fancy no one has a Correggio but himself? I have one that cost me two thousand guineas, and I would not part with it for double the sum; but I never talk about it.”
“That boy Volant,” says old Sir Andrew Chalkstone, “is so delighted to find himself the father of another boy, that, by Jove, he can speak of nothing else. Νow I have a little thing in a cradle, too; a fine boy, they tell me, and vastly like his father, but I never talk about it.”
Well, well! let a man be obliging to his neighbours, and merciful to his tenants, an upright citizen and an affectionate friend, and there is one judge who will not condemn him for having “the best bat in the school!”