Beauchamps Career, v1

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This etext was produced by David Widger

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BEAUCHAMP'S CAREER

By George Meredith

1897

CONTENTS

BOOK 1.
I. THE CHAMPION OF HIS COUNTRY
II. UNCLE, NEPHEW, AND ANOTHER
III. CONTAINS BARONIAL VIEWS OF THE PRESENT
IV. A GLIMPSE OF NEVIL IN ACTION
V. RENEE
VI. LOVE IN VENICE
VII. AN AWAKENING FOR BOTH
VIII. A NIGHT ON THE ADRIATIC
IX. MORNING AT SEA UNDER THE ALPS
X. A SINGULAR COUNCIL

BOOK 2.
XI. CAPTAIN BASKELETT
XII. AN INTERVIEW WITH THE INFAMOUS Dr. SHRAPNEL
XIII. A SUPERFINE CONSCIENCE
XIV. THE LEADING ARTICLE AND MR. TIMOTHY TURBOT
XV. CECILIA HALKETT
XVI. A PARTIAL DISPLAY OF BEAUCHAMP IN HIS COLOURS
XVII. HIS FRIEND AND FOE
XVIII. CONCERNING THE ACT OF CANVASSING

BOOK 3.
XIX. LORD PALMET, AND CERTAIN ELECTORS
XX. A DAY AT ITCHINCOPE
XXI. THE QUESTION AS TO THE EXAMINATION OF THE WHIGS,
AND THE FINE BLOW STRUCK BY MR. EVERARD ROMFREY
XXII. THE DRIVE INTO BEVISHAM
XXIII. TOURDESTELLE
XXIV. HIS HOLIDAY
XXV. THE ADVENTURE OF THE BOAT.

BOOK 4.
XXVI. MR. BLACKBURN TUCKHAM
XXVII. A SHORT SIDELOOK AT THE ELECTION
XXVIII. TOUCHING A YOUNG LADY'S HEART AND HER INTELLECT
XXIX. THE EPISTLE OF DR. SHRAPNEL TO COMMANDER BEAUCHAMP
XXX. THE BAITING OF DR. SHRAPNEL
XXXI. SHOWING A CHIVALROUS GENTLEMAN SET IN MOTION
XXXII. AN EFFORT TO CONQUER CECILIA IN BEAUCHAMP'S FASHION
XXXIII. THE FIRST ENCOUNTER AT STEYNHAM

BOOK 5.
XXXIV. THE FACE OF RENEE
XXXV. THE RIDE IN THE WRONG DIRECTION
XXXVI. PURSUIT OF THE APOLOGY OF MR. ROMFREY TO DR. SHRAPNEL
XXXVII. CECILIA CONQUERED
XXXVIII. LORD AVONLEY
XXXIX. BETWEEN BEAUCHAMP AND CECILIA
XL. A TRIAL OF HIM
XLI. A LAME VICTORY

BOOK 6.
XLII. THE TWO PASSIONS
XLIII. THE EARL OF ROMFREY AND THE COUNTESS
XLIV. THE NEPHEWS OF THE EARL, AND ANOTHER EXHIBITION OF THE TWO
PASSIONS IN BEAUCHAMP.
XLV. A LITTLE PLOT AGAINST CECILIA
XLVI. AS IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN FORESEEN
XLVII. THE REFUSAL OF HIM
XLVIII. OF THE TRIAL AWAITING THE EARL OF ROMFREY
XLIX. A FABRIC OF BARONIAL DESPOTISM CRUMBLES

BOOK 7.
L. AT THE COTTAGE ON THE COMMON
LI. IN THE NIGHT
LII. QUESTION OF A PILGRIMAGE AND AN ACT OF PENANCE
LIII. THE APOLOGY TO DR. SHRAPNEL
LIV. THE FRUITS OF THE APOLOGY
LV. WITHOUT LOVE
LVI. THE LAST OF NEVIL BEAUCHAMP

BEAUCHAMP'S CAREER

BOOK 1.

I. THE CHAMPION OF HIS COUNTRY
II. UNCLE, NEPHEW, AND ANOTHER
III. CONTAINS BARONIAL VIEWS OF THE PRESENT
IV. A GLIMPSE OF NEVIL IN ACTION
V. RENEE
VI. LOVE IN VENICE
VII. AN AWAKENING FOR BOTH
VIII. A NIGHT ON THE ADRIATIC
IX. MORNING AT SEA UNDER THE ALPS
X. A SINGULAR COUNCIL

CHAPTER I

THE CHAMPION OF HIS COUNTRY

When young Nevil Beauchamp was throwing off his midshipman's jacket for
a holiday in the garb of peace, we had across Channel a host of dreadful
military officers flashing swords at us for some critical observations
of ours upon their sovereign, threatening Afric's fires and savagery.
The case occurred in old days now and again, sometimes, upon imagined
provocation, more furiously than at others. We were unarmed, and the
spectacle was distressing. We had done nothing except to speak our minds
according to the habit of the free, and such an explosion appeared as
irrational and excessive as that of a powder-magazine in reply to nothing
more than the light of a spark. It was known that a valorous General of
the Algerian wars proposed to make a clean march to the capital of the
British Empire at the head of ten thousand men; which seems a small
quantity to think much about, but they wore wide red breeches blown out
by Fame, big as her cheeks, and a ten thousand of that sort would never
think of retreating. Their spectral advance on quaking London through
Kentish hopgardens, Sussex corn-fields, or by the pleasant hills of
Surrey, after a gymnastic leap over the riband of salt water, haunted
many pillows. And now those horrid shouts of the legions of Caesar,
crying to the inheritor of an invading name to lead them against us, as
the origin of his title had led the army of Gaul of old gloriously,
scared sweet sleep. We saw them in imagination lining the opposite
shore; eagle and standard-bearers, and gallifers, brandishing their fowls
and their banners in a manner to frighten the decorum of the universe.
Where were our men?

The returns of the census of our population were oppressively
satisfactory, and so was the condition of our youth. We could row and
ride and fish and shoot, and breed largely: we were athletes with a fine
history and a full purse: we had first-rate sporting guns, unrivalled
park-hacks and hunters, promising babies to carry on the renown of
England to the next generation, and a wonderful Press, and a Constitution
the highest reach of practical human sagacity. But where were our armed
men? where our great artillery? where our proved captains, to resist a
sudden sharp trial of the national mettle? Where was the first line of
England's defence, her navy? These were questions, and Ministers were
called upon to answer them. The Press answered them boldly, with the
appalling statement that we had no navy and no army. At the most we
could muster a few old ships, a couple of experimental vessels of war,
and twenty-five thousand soldiers indifferently weaponed.

We were in fact as naked to the Imperial foe as the merely painted
Britons.

This being apprehended, by the aid of our own shortness of figures and
the agitated images of the red-breeched only waiting the signal to jump
and be at us, there ensued a curious exhibition that would be termed, in
simple language, writing to the newspapers, for it took the outward form
of letters: in reality, it was the deliberate saddling of our ancient
nightmare of Invasion, putting the postillion on her, and trotting her
along the high-road with a winding horn to rouse old Panic. Panic we
will, for the sake of convenience, assume to be of the feminine gender,
and a spinster, though properly she should be classed with the large
mixed race of mental and moral neuters which are the bulk of comfortable
nations. She turned in her bed at first like the sluggard of the
venerable hymnist: but once fairly awakened, she directed a stare toward
the terrific foreign contortionists, and became in an instant all stormy
nightcap and fingers starving for the bell-rope. Forthwith she burst
into a series of shrieks, howls, and high piercing notes that caused even
the parliamentary Opposition, in the heat of an assault on a parsimonious
Government, to abandon its temporary advantage and be still awhile. Yet
she likewise performed her part with a certain deliberation and method,
as if aware that it was a part she had to play in the composition of a
singular people. She did a little mischief by dropping on the stock-
markets; in other respects she was harmless, and, inasmuch as she
established a subject for conversation, useful.

Then, lest she should have been taken too seriously, the Press, which had
kindled, proceeded to extinguish her with the formidable engines called
leading articles, which fling fire or water, as the occasion may require.
It turned out that we had ships ready for launching, and certain
regiments coming home from India; hedges we had, and a spirited body of
yeomanry; and we had pluck and patriotism, the father and mother of
volunteers innumerable. Things were not so bad.

Panic, however, sent up a plaintive whine. What country had anything
like our treasures to defend? countless riches, beautiful women, an
inviolate soil! True, and it must be done. Ministers were
authoritatively summoned to set to work immediately. They replied that
they had been at work all the time, and were at work now. They could
assure the country, that though they flourished no trumpets, they
positively guaranteed the safety of our virgins and coffers.

Then the people, rather ashamed, abused the Press for unreasonably
disturbing them. The Press attacked old Panic and stripped her naked.
Panic, with a desolate scream, arraigned the parliamentary Opposition for
having inflated her to serve base party purposes. The Opposition
challenged the allegations of Government, pointed to the trimness of army
and navy during its term of office, and proclaimed itself watch-dog of
the country, which is at all events an office of a kind. Hereupon the
ambassador of yonder ireful soldiery let fall a word, saying, by the
faith of his Master, there was no necessity for watch-dogs to bark; an
ardent and a reverent army had but fancied its beloved chosen Chief
insulted; the Chief and chosen held them in; he, despite obloquy,
discerned our merits and esteemed us.

So, then, Panic, or what remained of her, was put to bed again. The
Opposition retired into its kennel growling. The People coughed like a
man of two minds, doubting whether he has been divinely inspired or has
cut a ridiculous figure. The Press interpreted the cough as a warning to
Government; and Government launched a big ship with hurrahs, and ordered
the recruiting-sergeant to be seen conspicuously.

And thus we obtained a moderate reinforcement of our arms.

It was not arrived at by connivance all round, though there was a look of
it. Certainly it did not come of accident, though there was a look of
that as well. Nor do we explain much of the secret by attributing it to
the working of a complex machinery. The housewife's remedy of a good
shaking for the invalid who will not arise and dance away his gout,
partly illustrates the action of the Press upon the country: and perhaps
the country shaken may suffer a comparison with the family chariot of the
last century, built in a previous one, commodious, furnished agreeably,
being all that the inside occupants could require of a conveyance, until
the report of horsemen crossing the heath at a gallop sets it
dishonourably creaking and complaining in rapid motion, and the squire
curses his miserly purse that would not hire a guard, and his dame says,
I told you so!--Foolhardy man, to suppose, because we have constables in
the streets of big cities, we have dismissed the highwayman to limbo.
And here he is, and he will cost you fifty times the sum you would have
laid out to keep him at a mile's respectful distance! But see, the
wretch is bowing: he smiles at our carriage, and tells the coachman that
he remembers he has been our guest, and really thinks we need not go so
fast. He leaves word for you, sir, on your peril to denounce him on
another occasion from the magisterial Bench, for that albeit he is a
gentleman of the road, he has a mission to right society, and succeeds
legitimately to that bold Good Robin Hood who fed the poor.--Fresh from
this polite encounter, the squire vows money for his personal protection:
and he determines to speak his opinion of Sherwood's latest captain as
loudly as ever. That he will, I do not say. It might involve a large
sum per annum.

Similes are very well in their way. None can be sufficient in this case
without levelling a finger at the taxpayer--nay, directly mentioning him.
He is the key of our ingenuity. He pays his dues; he will not pay the
additional penny or two wanted of him, that we may be a step or two ahead
of the day we live in, unless he is frightened. But scarcely anything
less than the wild alarum of a tocsin will frighten him. Consequently
the tocsin has to be sounded; and the effect is woeful past measure: his
hugging of his army, his kneeling on the shore to his navy, his
implorations of his yeomanry and his hedges, are sad to note. His bursts
of pot-valiancy (the male side of the maiden Panic within his bosom) are
awful to his friends. Particular care must be taken after he has begun
to cool and calculate his chances of security, that he do not gather to
him a curtain of volunteers and go to sleep again behind them; for they
cost little in proportion to the much they pretend to be to him.
Patriotic taxpayers doubtless exist: prophetic ones, provident ones, do
not. At least we show that we are wanting in them. The taxpayer of a
free land taxes himself, and his disinclination for the bitter task, save
under circumstances of screaming urgency--as when the night-gear and bed-
linen of old convulsed Panic are like the churned Channel sea in the
track of two hundred hostile steamboats, let me say--is of the kind the
gentle schoolboy feels when death or an expedition has relieved him of
his tyrant, and he is entreated notwithstanding to go to his books.

Will you not own that the working of the system for scaring him and
bleeding is very ingenious? But whether the ingenuity comes of native
sagacity, as it is averred by some, or whether it shows an instinct
labouring to supply the deficiencies of stupidity, according to others,
I cannot express an opinion. I give you the position of the country
undisturbed by any moralizings of mine. The youth I introduce to you
will rarely let us escape from it; for the reason that he was born with
so extreme and passionate a love for his country, that he thought all
things else of mean importance in comparison: and our union is one in
which, following the counsel of a sage and seer, I must try to paint for
you what is, not that which I imagine. This day, this hour, this life,
and even politics, the centre and throbbing heart of it (enough, when
unburlesqued, to blow the down off the gossamer-stump of fiction at a
single breath, I have heard tell), must be treated of men, and the ideas
of men, which are--it is policy to be emphatic upon truisms--are actually
the motives of men in a greater degree than their appetites: these are my
theme; and may it be my fortune to keep them at bloodheat, and myself
calm as a statue of Memnon in prostrate Egypt! He sits there waiting for
the sunlight; I here, and readier to be musical than you think. I can at
any rate be impartial; and do but fix your eyes on the sunlight striking
him and swallowing the day in rounding him, and you have an image of the
passive receptivity of shine and shade I hold it good to aim at, if at
the same time I may keep my characters at blood-heat. I shoot my arrows
at a mark that is pretty certain to return them to me. And as to perfect
success, I should be like the panic-stricken shopkeepers in my alarm at
it; for I should believe that genii of the air fly above our tree-tops
between us and the incognizable spheres, catching those ambitious shafts
they deem it a promise of fun to play pranks with.

Young Mr. Beauchamp at that period of the panic had not the slightest
feeling for the taxpayer. He was therefore unable to penetrate the
mystery of our roundabout way of enlivening him. He pored over the
journals in perplexity, and talked of his indignation nightly to his
pretty partners at balls, who knew not they were lesser Andromedas of his
dear Andromeda country, but danced and chatted and were gay, and said
they were sure he would defend them. The men he addressed were civil.
They listened to him, sometimes with smiles and sometimes with laughter,
but approvingly, liking the lad's quick spirit. They were accustomed to
the machinery employed to give our land a shudder and to soothe it, and
generally remarked that it meant nothing. His uncle Everard, and his
uncle's friend Stukely Culbrett, expounded the nature of Frenchmen to
him, saying that they were uneasy when not periodically thrashed; it
would be cruel to deny them their crow beforehand; and so the pair of
gentlemen pooh-poohed the affair; agreeing with him, however, that we had
no great reason to be proud of our appearance, and the grounds they
assigned for this were the activity and the prevalence of the ignoble
doctrines of Manchester--a power whose very existence was unknown to Mr.
Beauchamp. He would by no means allow the burden of our national
disgrace to be cast on one part of the nation. We were insulted, and all
in a poultry-flutter, yet no one seemed to feel it but himself! Outside
the Press and Parliament, which must necessarily be the face we show to
the foreigner, absolute indifference reigned. Navy men and red-coats
were willing to join him or anybody in sneers at a clipping and paring
miserly Government, but they were insensible to the insult, the panic,
the startled-poultry show, the shame of our exhibition of ourselves in
Europe. It looked as if the blustering French Guard were to have it all
their own way. And what would they, what could they but, think of us!
He sat down to write them a challenge.

He is not the only Englishman who has been impelled by a youthful
chivalry to do that. He is perhaps the youngest who ever did it, and
consequently there were various difficulties to be overcome. As regards
his qualifications for addressing Frenchmen, a year of his prae-neptunal
time had been spent in their capital city for the purpose of acquiring
French of Paris, its latest refinements of pronunciation and polish, and
the art of conversing. He had read the French tragic poets and Moliere;
he could even relish the Gallic-classic--'Qu'il mourut!' and he spoke
French passably, being quite beyond the Bullish treatment of the tongue.
Writing a letter in French was a different undertaking. The one he
projected bore no resemblance to an ordinary letter. The briefer the
better, of course; but a tone of dignity was imperative, and the tone
must be individual, distinctive, Nevil Beauchamp's, though not in his
native language. First he tried his letter in French, and lost sight of
himself completely. 'Messieurs de la Garde Francaise,' was a good
beginning; the remainder gave him a false air of a masquerader, most
uncomfortable to see; it was Nevil Beauchamp in moustache and imperial,
and bagbreeches badly fitting. He tried English, which was really
himself, and all that heart could desire, supposing he addressed a body
of midshipmen just a little loftily. But the English, when translated,
was bald and blunt to the verge of offensiveness.

'GENTLEMEN OF THE FRENCH GUARD,

'I take up the glove you have tossed us. I am an Englishman.
That will do for a reason.'

This might possibly pass with the gentlemen of the English Guard. But
read:

'MESSIEURS DE LA GARDE FRANCAISE,

'J'accepte votre gant. Je suis Anglais. La raison est suffisante.'

And imagine French Guardsmen reading it!

Mr. Beauchamp knew the virtue of punctiliousness in epithets and phrases
of courtesy toward a formal people, and as the officers of the French
Guard were gentlemen of birth, he would have them to perceive in him
their equal at a glance. On the other hand, a bare excess of phrasing
distorted him to a likeness of Mascarille playing Marquis. How to be
English and think French! The business was as laborious as if he had
started on the rough sea of the Channel to get at them in an open boat.

The lady governing his uncle Everard's house, Mrs. Rosamund Culling,
entered his room and found him writing with knitted brows. She was
young, that is, she was not in her middleage; and they were the dearest
of friends; each had given the other proof of it. Nevil looked up and
beheld her lifted finger.

'You are composing a love-letter, Nevil!' The accusation sounded like
irony.

'No,' said he, puffing; 'I wish I were!

'What can it be, then?'

He thrust pen and paper a hand's length on the table, and gazed at her.

'My dear Nevil, is it really anything serious?' said she.

'I am writing French, ma'am.'

'Then I may help you. It must be very absorbing, for you did not hear my
knock at your door.'

Now, could he trust her? The widow of a British officer killed nobly
fighting for his country in India, was a person to be relied on for
active and burning sympathy in a matter that touched the country's
honour. She was a woman, and a woman of spirit. Men had not pleased him
of late. Something might be hoped from a woman.

He stated his occupation, saying that if she would assist him in his
French she would oblige him; the letter must be written and must go.
This was uttered so positively that she bowed her head, amused by the
funny semi-tone of defiance to the person to whom he confided the secret.
She had humour, and was ravished by his English boyishness, with the
novel blush of the heroical-nonsensical in it.

Mrs. Culling promised him demurely that she would listen, objecting
nothing to his plan, only to his French.

'Messieurs de la Garde Francaise!' he commenced.

Her criticism followed swiftly.

'I think you are writing to the Garde Imperiale.'

He admitted his error, and thanked her warmly.

'Messieurs de la Garde Imperiale!'

'Does not that,' she said, 'include the non-commissioned officers, the
privates, and the cooks, of all the regiments?'

He could scarcely think that, but thought it provoking the French had
no distinctive working title corresponding to gentlemen, and suggested
'Messieurs les Officiers': which might, Mrs. Culling assured him,
comprise the barbers. He frowned, and she prescribed his writing,
'Messieurs les Colonels de la Garde Imperiale.' This he set down.
The point was that a stand must be made against the flood of sarcasms
and bullyings to which the country was exposed in increasing degrees,
under a belief that we would fight neither in the mass nor individually.
Possibly, if it became known that the colonels refused to meet a
midshipman, the gentlemen of our Household troops would advance a step.

Mrs. Calling's adroit efforts to weary him out of his project were
unsuccessful. He was too much on fire to know the taste of absurdity.

Nevil repeated what he had written in French, and next the English of
what he intended to say.

The lady conscientiously did her utmost to reconcile the two languages.
She softened his downrightness, passed with approval his compliments to
France and the ancient high reputation of her army, and, seeing that a
loophole was left for them to apologize, asked how many French colonels
he wanted to fight.

'I do not WANT, ma'am,' said Nevil.

He had simply taken up the glove they had again flung at our feet: and he
had done it to stop the incessant revilings, little short of positive
contempt, which we in our indolence exposed ourselves to from the
foreigner, particularly from Frenchmen, whom he liked; and precisely
because he liked them he insisted on forcing them to respect us. Let his
challenge be accepted, and he would find backers. He knew the stuff of
Englishmen: they only required an example.

'French officers are skilful swordsmen,' said Mrs. Culling. 'My husband
has told me they will spend hours of the day thrusting and parrying.
They are used to duelling.'

'We,' Nevil answered, 'don't get apprenticed to the shambles to learn our
duty on the field. Duelling is, I know, sickening folly. We go too far
in pretending to despise every insult pitched at us. A man may do for
his country what he wouldn't do for himself.'

Mrs. Culling gravely said she hoped that bloodshed would be avoided, and
Mr. Beauchamp nodded.

She left him hard at work.

He was a popular boy, a favourite of women, and therefore full of
engagements to Balls and dinners. And he was a modest boy, though his
uncle encouraged him to deliver his opinions freely and argue with men.
The little drummer attached to wheeling columns thinks not more of
himself because his short legs perform the same strides as the
grenadiers'; he is happy to be able to keep the step; and so was Nevil;
and if ever he contradicted a senior, it was in the interests of the
country. Veneration of heroes, living and dead, kept down his conceit.
He worshipped devotedly. From an early age he exacted of his flattering
ladies that they must love his hero. Not to love his hero was to be
strangely in error, to be in need of conversion, and he proselytized with
the ardour of the Moslem. His uncle Everard was proud of his good looks,
fire, and nonsense, during the boy's extreme youth. He traced him by
cousinships back to the great Earl Beauchamp of Froissart, and would have
it so; and he would have spoilt him had not the young fellow's mind been
possessed by his reverence for men of deeds. How could he think of
himself, who had done nothing, accomplished nothing, so long as he
brooded on the images of signal Englishmen whose names were historic for
daring, and the strong arm, and artfulness, all given to the service of
the country?--men of a magnanimity overcast with simplicity, which Nevil
held to be pure insular English; our type of splendid manhood, not
discoverable elsewhere. A method of enraging him was to distinguish one
or other of them as Irish, Scottish, or Cambrian. He considered it a
dismemberment of the country. And notwithstanding the pleasure he had in
uniting in his person the strong red blood of the chivalrous Lord
Beauchamp with the hard and tenacious Romfrey blood, he hated the title
of Norman. We are English--British, he said. A family resting its pride
on mere ancestry provoked his contempt, if it did not show him one of his
men. He had also a disposition to esteem lightly the family which,
having produced a man, settled down after that effort for generations to
enjoy the country's pay. Boys are unjust; but Nevil thought of the
country mainly, arguing that we should not accept the country's money for
what we do not ourselves perform. These traits of his were regarded as
characteristics hopeful rather than the reverse; none of his friends and
relatives foresaw danger in them. He was a capital boy for his elders to
trot out and banter.

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