The Young Duke — Key Ideas to Explore

at Castle Dacre. Had he been aware of that intended gratification, he could with ease, and would with pleasure, have postponed his visit to Norfolk. He also regretted that it would not be in his power to visit London this season; and as he thought that no further time should be lost in resigning the trust with which he had been so honoured, he begged leave to forward his accounts to the Duke, and with them some notes which he believed would convey some not unimportant information to his Grace for the future management of his property. The young Duke took a rapid glance at the sum total of his rental, crammed all the papers into a cabinet with a determination to examine them the first opportunity, and then rolled off to a morning concert of which he was the patron.

The intended opportunity for the examination of the important papers was never caught, nor was it surprising that it escaped capture. It is difficult to conceive a career of more various, more constant, or more distracting excitement than that in which the Duke of St. James was now engaged. His life was an ocean of enjoyment, and each hour, like each wave, threw up its pearl. How dull was the ball in which he did not bound! How dim the banquet in which he did not glitter! His presence in the Gardens compensated for the want of flowers; his vision in the Park for the want of sun. In public breakfasts he was more indispensable than pine-apples; in private concerts more noticed than an absent prima donna. How fair was the dame on whom he smiled! How dark was the tradesman on whom he frowned! Think only of prime ministers and princes, to say nothing of princesses; nay! think only of managers of operas and French actors, to say nothing of French actresses; think only of jewellers, milliners, artists, horse-dealers, all the shoals who hurried for his sanction; think only of the two or three thousand civilised beings for whom all this population breathed, and who each of them had claims upon our hero’s notice! Think of the statesmen, who had so much to ask and so much to give; the dandies to feed with and to be fed; the dangerous dowagers and the desperate mothers; the widows, wild as early partridges; the budding virgins, mild as a summer cloud and soft as an opera hat! Think of the drony bores, with their dull hum; think of the chivalric guardsmen, with their horses to sell and their bills to discount; think of Willis, think of Crockford, think of White’s, think of Brooks’, and you may form a faint idea how the young Duke had to talk, and eat, and flirt, and cut, and pet, and patronise!

You think it impossible for one man to do all this. There is yet much behind. You may add to the catalogue Melton and Newmarket; and if to hunt without an appetite and to bet without an object will not sicken you, why, build a yacht!

The Duke of St. James gave his first grand entertainment for the season. It was like the assembly of the immortals at the first levee of Jove. All hurried to pay their devoirs to the young king of fashion; and each who succeeded in becoming a member of the Court felt as proud as a peer with a new title, or a baronet with an old one. An air of regal splendour, an almost imperial assumption, was observed in the arrangements of the fête. A troop of servants in rich liveries filled the hall; grooms lined the staircase; Spiridion, the Greek page, lounged on an ottoman in an ante-chamber, and, with the assistance of six young gentlemen in crimson-and-silver uniforms, announced the coming of the cherished guests. Cartloads of pine-apples were sent up from the Yorkshire Castle, and waggons of orange-trees from the Twickenham Villa.

A brilliant coterie, of which his Grace was a member, had amused themselves a few nights before by representing in costume the Court of Charles the First. They agreed this night to reappear in their splendid dresses; and the Duke, who was Villiers, supported his character, even to the gay shedding of a shower of diamonds. In his cap was observed an hereditary sapphire, which blazed like a volcano, and which was rumoured to be worth his rent-roll.

There was a short concert, at which the most celebrated Signora made her début; there was a single vaudeville, which a white satin play-bill, presented to each guest as they entered the temporary theatre, indicated to have been written for the occasion; there was a ball, in which was introduced a new dance. Nothing for a moment was allowed to lag. _Longueurs_ were skilfully avoided, and the excitement was so rapid that every one had an appetite for supper.

A long gallery lined with bronzes and _bijouterie_, with cabinets and sculpture, with china and with paintings, all purchased for the future ornament of Hauteville House, and here stowed away in unpretending, but most artificial, confusion, offered accommodation to all the guests. To a table covered with gold, and placed in a magnificent tent upon the stage, his Grace loyally led two princes of the blood and a child of France. Madame de Protocoli, Lady Aphrodite Grafton, the Duchess of Shropshire, and Lady Fitz-pompey, shared the honours of the pavilion, and some might be excused for envying a party so brilliant and a situation so distinguished. Yet Lady Aphrodite was an unwilling member of it; and nothing but the personal solicitation of Sir Lucius would have induced her to consent to the wish of their host.

A pink _carte_ succeeded to the satin play-bill. Vi-tellius might have been pleased with the banquet. Ah, how shall we describe those soups, which surely must have been the magical elixir! How paint those ortolans dressed by the inimitable artist, à la St. James, for the occasion, and which look so beautiful in death that they must surely have preferred such an euthanasia even to flying in the perfumed air of an Auso-nian heaven!

Sweet bird! though thou hast lost thy plumage, thou shalt fly to my mistress! Is it not better to be nibbled by her than mumbled by a cardinal? I, too, will feed on thy delicate beauty. Sweet bird! thy companion has fled to my mistress; and now thou shalt thrill the nerves of her master! Oh! doff, then, thy waistcoat of wine-leaves, pretty rover! and show me that bosom more delicious even than woman’s. What gushes of rapture! What a flavour! How peculiar! Even how sacred I Heaven at once sends both manna and quails. Another little wanderer! Pray follow my example! Allow me. All Paradise opens! Let me die eating ortolans to the sound of soft music!

Even the supper was brief, though brilliant; and again the cotillon and the quadrille, the waltz and the galoppe! At no moment of his life had the young Duke felt existence so intense. Wherever he turned his eye he found a responding glance of beauty and admiration; wherever he turned his ear the whispered tones were soft and sweet as summer winds. Each look was an offering, each word adoration! His soul dilated; the glory of the scene touched all his passions. He almost determined not again to mingle in society; but, like a monarch, merely to receive the world which worshipped him. The idea was sublime: was it even to him impracticable? In the midst of his splendour he fell into a reverie, and mused on his magnificence. He could no longer resist the conviction that he was a superior essence, even to all around him. The world seemed created solely for his enjoyment. Nor man nor woman could withstand him. From this hour he delivered himself up to a sublime selfishness. With all his passions and all his profusion, a callousness crept over his heart. His sympathy for those he believed his inferiors and his vassals was slight. Where we do not respect we soon cease to love; when we cease to love, virtue weeps and flies. His soul wandered in dreams of omnipotence.

This picture perhaps excites your dislike; perchance your contempt. Pause! Pity him! Pity his fatal youth!

THE Lady Aphrodite at first refused to sit in the Duke’s pavilion. Was she, then, in the _habit_ of refusing? Let us not forget our Venus of the Waters. Shall we whisper where the young Duke first dared to hope? No, you shall guess. _Je vous le donne en trois_. The Gardens? The opera? The tea-room? No! no! no! You are conceiving a locality much more romantic. Already you have created the bower of a Parisina, where the waterfall is even more musical than the birds, more lulling than the evening winds; where all is pale, except the stars; all hushed, except their beating pulses! Will this do? No! What think you, then, of a _Bazaar_?

O thou wonderful nineteenth century! thou that believest in no miracles and doest so many, hast thou brought this, too, about, that ladies’ hearts should be won, and gentlemen’s also, not in courts of tourney or halls of revel, but over a counter and behind a stall? We are, indeed, a nation of shopkeepers!

The king of Otaheite, though a despot, was a reformer. He discovered that the eating of bread-fruit was a barbarous custom, which would infallibly prevent his people from being a great nation. He determined to introduce French rolls. A party rebelled; the despot was energetic; some were executed; the rest ejected. The vagabonds arrived in England. As they had been banished in opposition to French rolls, they were declared to be a British interest. They professed their admiration of civil and religious liberty, and also of a subscription. When they had drunk a great deal of punch, and spent all their money, they discovered that they had nothing to eat, and would infallibly have been starved, had not an Hibernian Marchioness, who had never been in Ireland, been exceedingly shocked that men should die of hunger; and so, being one of the bustlers, she got up a fancy sale and a _Sandwich Isle Bazaar_.

All the world was there and of course our hero. Never was the arrival of a comet watched by astronomers who had calculated its advent with more anxiety than was the appearance of the young Duke. Never did man pass through such dangers. It was the fiery ordeal. St. Anthony himself was not assailed by more temptations. Now he was saved from the lustre of a blonde face by the superior richness of a blonde lace. He would infallibly have been ravished by that ringlet had he not been nearly reduced by that ring which sparkled on a hand like the white cat’s. He was only preserved from his unprecedented dangers by their number. No, no! He had a better talisman: his conceit.

‘Ah, Lady Balmont!’ said his Grace to a smiling artist, who offered him one of her own drawings of a Swiss cottage, ‘for me to be a tenant, it must be love and a cottage!’

‘What! am I to buy this ring, Mrs. Abercroft? _Point de jour_. Oh! dreadful phrase! Allow me to present it to you, for you are the only one whom such words cannot make tremble.’

‘This chain, Lady Jemima, for my glass! It will teach me where to direct it.’

‘Ah! Mrs. Fitzroy!’ and he covered his face with affected fear. ‘Can you forgive me? Your beautiful note has been half an hour unanswered. The box is yours for Tuesday.’

He tried to pass the next stall with a smiling bow, but he could not escape. It was Lady de Courcy, a dowager, but not old. Once beautiful, her charms had not yet disappeared. She had a pair of glittering eyes, a skilfully-carmined cheek, and locks yet raven. Her eloquence made her now as conspicuous as once did her beauty. The young Duke was her constant object and her occasional victim. He hated above all things a talking woman; he dreaded above all others Lady de Courcy.

He could not shirk. She summoned him by name so loud that crowds of barbarians stared, and a man called to a woman, and said, ‘My dear! make haste; here’s a Duke!’

Lady de Courcy was prime confidant of the Irish Marchioness. She affected enthusiasm about the poor sufferers. She had learnt Otaheitan, she lectured about the bread-fruit, and she played upon a barbarous thrum-thrum, the only musical instrument in those savage wastes, ironically called the Society Islands, because there is no society. She was dreadful. The Duke in despair took out his purse, poured forth from the pink and silver delicacy, worked by the slender fingers of Lady Aphrodite, a shower of sovereigns, and fairly scampered off. At length he reached the lady of his heart.

‘I fear,’ said the young Duke with a smile, and in a soft sweet voice, ‘that you will never speak to me again, for I am a ruined man.’

A beam of gentle affection reprimanded him even for badinage on such a subject.

‘I really came here to buy up all your stock, but that gorgon, Lady de Courcy, captured me, and my ransom has sent me here free, but a beggar. I do not know a more ill-fated fellow than myself. Now, if you had only condescended to take me prisoner, I might have saved my money; for I should have kissed my chain.’

‘My chains, I fear, are neither very alluring nor very strong.’ She spoke with a thoughtful air, and he answered her only with his eye.

‘I must bear off something from your stall,’ he resumed in a more rapid and gayer tone, ‘and, as I cannot purchase you must present. Now for a gift!’

‘Your Grace is really spoiling my sale. See! poor Lord Bagshot. What a valuable purchaser.’

‘Ah! Bag, my boy!’ said the Duke to a slang young nobleman whom he abhorred, but of whom he sometimes made a butt, ‘am I in your way? Here! take this, and this, and this, and give me your purse. I’ll pay Lady Aphrodite.’ And so the Duke again showered some sovereigns, and returned the shrunken silk to its defrauded owner, who stared, and would have remonstrated, but the Duke turned his back upon him.

‘There now,’ he continued to Lady Aphrodite; ‘there is two hundred per cent, profit for you. You are not half a _marchande_. I will stand here and be your shopman. Well, Annesley,’ said he, as that dignitary passed, ‘what will you buy? I advise you to get a place. ‘Pon my soul, ‘tis pleasant! Try Lady de Courcy. You know you are a favourite.’

‘I assure your Grace,’ said Mr. Annesley, speaking slowly, ‘that that story about Lady de Courcy is quite untrue and very rude. I never turn my back on any woman; only my heel. We are on the best possible terms. She is never to speak to me, and I am always to bow to her. But I really must purchase. Where did you get that glass-chain, St. James? Lady Afy, can you accommodate me?’

‘Here is one prettier! But are you near-sighted, too, Mr. Annesley?’

‘Very. I look upon a long-sighted man as a brute who, not being able to see with his mind, is obliged to see with his body. The price of this?’

‘A sovereign,’ said the Duke; ‘cheap; but we consider you as a friend.’

‘A sovereign! You consider me a young Duke rather. Two shillings, and that a severe price; a charitable price. Here is half-a-crown; give me sixpence. I was not a minor. Farewell! I go to the little Pomfret. She is a sweet flower, and I intend to wear her in my button-hole. Good-bye, Lady Afy!’

The gay morning had worn away, and St. James never left his fascinating position. Many a sweet and many a soft thing he uttered. Sometimes he was baffled, but never beaten, and always returned to the charge with spirit. He was confident, because he was reckless: the lady had less trust in herself, because she was anxious. Yet she combated well, and repressed the feelings which she could hardly conceal.

Many of her colleagues had already departed. She requested the Duke to look after her carriage. A bold plan suddenly occurred to him, and he executed it with rare courage and rarer felicity.

‘Lady Aphrodite Grafton’s carriage!’

‘Oh! go home. Your lady will return with Madame de Protocoli.’

‘I am sorry, that, by some blunder, your carriage has gone. What could you have told them?’

‘Impossible! How provoking! How stupid!’

‘Perhaps you told them that you would return with the Fitz-pompeys, but they are gone; or Mrs. Aberleigh, and she is not here; or perhaps--but they have gone too. Everyone has gone.’

‘What shall I do? How distressing! I had better send. Pray send; or I will ask Lady de Courcy.’

‘Oh! no, no! I really did not like to see you with her. As a favour--as a favour to me, I pray you not.’

‘What can I do? I must send. Let me beg your Grace to send.’

‘Certainly, certainly; but, ten to one, there will be some mistake. There always is some mistake when you send these strangers. And, besides, I forgot all this time my carriage is here. Let it take you home.’

‘Dearest Lady Aphrodite, do not distress yourself. I can wait here till the carriage returns, or I can walk; to be sure, I can walk. Pray, pray take the carriage! As a favour--as a favour to me!’

‘But I cannot bear you to walk. I know you dislike walking.’

‘Well, then, I will wait.’

‘Well, if it must be so; but I am ashamed to inconvenience you. How provoking of these men! Pray, then, tell the coachman to drive fast, that you may not have to wait. I declare there is scarcely a human being in the room; and those odd people are staring so!’

He pressed her arm as he led her to his carriage. She is in; and yet, before the door shuts, he lingers.

‘I shall certainly walk,’ said he. ‘I do not think the easterly wind will make me very ill. Good-bye! Oh, what a _coup-de-vent_!’

‘Let me get out, then; and pray, pray take the carriage. I would much sooner do anything than go in it. I would much rather walk. I am sure you will be ill!’

‘Not if I be with you.’

THERE was a brilliant levee, all stars and garters; and a splendid drawing-room, all plumes and _séduisantes_. Many a bright eye, as its owner fought his way down St. James’s Street, shot a wistful glance at the enchanted bow-window where the Duke and his usual companions, Sir Lucius, Charles Annesley, and Lord Squib, lounged and laughed, stretched themselves and sneered: many a bright eye, that for a moment pierced the futurity that painted her going in state as Duchess of St. James.

His Majesty summoned a dinner party, a rare but magnificent event, and the chief of the house of Hauteville appeared among the chosen vassals. This visit did the young Duke good; and a few more might have permanently cured the conceit which the present one momentarily calmed. His Grace saw the plate, and was filled with envy; his Grace listened to his Majesty, and was filled with admiration. O, father of thy people! if thou wouldst but look a little oftener on thy younger sons, their morals and their manners might be alike improved.