Kenelm Chillingly, Book 1.
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KENELM CHILLINGLY
HIS ADVENTURES AND OPINIONS
BY
EDWARD BULWER LYTTON
(LORD LYTTON)
BOOK I.
CHAPTER I.
SIR PETER CHILLINGLY, of Exmundham, Baronet, F.R.S. and F.A.S., was
the representative of an ancient family, and a landed proprietor of
some importance. He had married young; not from any ardent
inclination for the connubial state, but in compliance with the
request of his parents. They took the pains to select his bride; and
if they might have chosen better, they might have chosen worse, which
is more than can be said for many men who choose wives for themselves.
Miss Caroline Brotherton was in all respects a suitable connection.
She had a pretty fortune, which was of much use in buying a couple of
farms, long desiderated by the Chillinglys as necessary for the
rounding of their property into a ring-fence. She was highly
connected, and brought into the county that experience of fashionable
life acquired by a young lady who has attended a course of balls for
three seasons, and gone out in matrimonial honours, with credit to
herself and her chaperon. She was handsome enough to satisfy a
husband's pride, but not so handsome as to keep perpetually on the
/qui vive/ a husband's jealousy. She was considered highly
accomplished; that is, she played upon the pianoforte so that any
musician would say she "was very well taught;" but no musician would
go out of his way to hear her a second time. She painted in
water-colours--well enough to amuse herself. She knew French and
Italian with an elegance so lady-like that, without having read more
than selected extracts from authors in those languages, she spoke them
both with an accent more correct than we have any reason to attribute
to Rousseau or Ariosto. What else a young lady may acquire in order
to be styled highly accomplished I do not pretend to know; but I am
sure that the young lady in question fulfilled that requirement in the
opinion of the best masters. It was not only an eligible match for
Sir Peter Chillingly,--it was a brilliant match. It was also a very
unexceptionable match for Miss Caroline Brotherton. This excellent
couple got on together as most excellent couples do. A short time
after marriage, Sir Peter, by the death of his parents--who, having
married their heir, had nothing left in life worth the trouble of
living for--succeeded to the hereditary estates; he lived for nine
months of the year at Exmundham, going to town for the other three
months. Lady Chillingly and himself were both very glad to go to
town, being bored at Exmundham; and very glad to go back to Exmundham,
being bored in town. With one exception it was an exceedingly happy
marriage, as marriages go. Lady Chillingly had her way in small
things; Sir Peter his way in great. Small things happen every day;
great things once in three years. Once in three years Lady Chillingly
gave way to Sir Peter; households so managed go on regularly. The
exception to their connubial happiness was, after all, but of a
negative description. Their affection was such that they sighed for a
pledge of it; fourteen years had he and Lady Chillingly remained
unvisited by the little stranger.
Now, in default of male issue, Sir Peter's estates passed to a distant
cousin as heir-at-law; and during the last four years this heir-at-law
had evinced his belief that practically speaking he was already
heir-apparent; and (though Sir Peter was a much younger man than
himself, and as healthy as any man well can be) had made his
expectations of a speedy succession unpleasantly conspicuous. He had
refused his consent to a small exchange of lands with a neighbouring
squire, by which Sir Peter would have obtained some good arable land,
for an outlying unprofitable wood that produced nothing but fagots and
rabbits, with the blunt declaration that he, the heir-at-law, was fond
of rabbit-shooting, and that the wood would be convenient to him next
season if he came into the property by that time, which he very
possibly might. He disputed Sir Peter's right to make his customary
fall of timber, and had even threatened him with a bill in Chancery on
that subject. In short, this heir-at-law was exactly one of those
persons to spite whom a landed proprietor would, if single, marry at
the age of eighty in the hope of a family.
Nor was it only on account of his very natural wish to frustrate the
expectations of this unamiable relation that Sir Peter Chillingly
lamented the absence of the little stranger. Although belonging to
that class of country gentlemen to whom certain political reasoners
deny the intelligence vouchsafed to other members of the community,
Sir Peter was not without a considerable degree of book-learning and a
great taste for speculative philosophy. He sighed for a legitimate
inheritor to the stores of his erudition, and, being a very benevolent
man, for a more active and useful dispenser of those benefits to the
human race which philosophers confer by striking hard against each
other; just as, how full soever of sparks a flint may be, they might
lurk concealed in the flint till doomsday, if the flint were not hit
by the steel. Sir Peter, in short, longed for a son amply endowed
with the combative quality, in which he himself was deficient, but
which is the first essential to all seekers after renown, and
especially to benevolent philosophers.
Under these circumstances one may well conceive the joy that filled
the household of Exmundham and extended to all the tenantry on that
venerable estate, by whom the present possessor was much beloved and
the prospect of an heir-at-law with a special eye to the preservation
of rabbits much detested, when the medical attendant of the
Chillinglys declared that 'her ladyship was in an interesting way;'
and to what height that joy culminated when, in due course of time, a
male baby was safely entbroned in his cradle. To that cradle Sir
Peter was summoned. He entered the room with a lively bound and a
radiant countenance: he quitted it with a musing step and an
overclouded brow.
Yet the baby was no monster. It did not come into the world with two
heads, as some babies are said to have done; it was formed as babies
are in general; was on the whole a thriving baby, a fine baby.
Nevertheless, its aspect awed the father as already it had awed the
nurse. The creature looked so unutterably solemn. It fixed its eyes
upon Sir Peter with a melancholy reproachful stare; its lips were
compressed and drawn downward as if discontentedly meditating its
future destinies. The nurse declared in a frightened whisper that it
had uttered no cry on facing the light. It had taken possession of
its cradle in all the dignity of silent sorrow. A more saddened and a
more thoughtful countenance a human being could not exhibit if he were
leaving the world instead of entering it.
"Hem!" said Sir Peter to himself on regaining the solitude of his
library; "a philosopher who contributes a new inhabitant to this vale
of tears takes upon himself very anxious responsibilities--"
At that moment the joy-bells rang out from the neighbouring church
tower, the summer sun shone into the windows, the bees hummed among
the flowers on the lawn. Sir Peter roused himself and looked forth,
"After all," said he, cheerily, "the vale of tears is not without a
smile."
CHAPTER II.
A FAMILY council was held at Exmundham Hall to deliberate on the name
by which this remarkable infant should be admitted into the Christian
community. The junior branches of that ancient house consisted,
first, of the obnoxious heir-at-law--a Scotch branch named Chillingly
Gordon. He was the widowed father of one son, now of the age of
three, and happily unconscious of the injury inflicted on his future
prospects by the advent of the new-born, which could not be truthfully
said of his Caledonian father. Mr. Chillingly Gordon was one of those
men who get on in the world with out our being able to discover why.
His parents died in his infancy and left him nothing; but the family
interest procured him an admission into the Charterhouse School, at
which illustrious academy he obtained no remarkable distinction.
Nevertheless, as soon as he left it the State took him under its
special care, and appointed him to a clerkship in a public office.
From that moment he continued to get on in the world, and was now a
Commissioner of Customs, with a salary of L1500 a year. As soon as he
had been thus enabled to maintain a wife, he selected a wife who
assisted to maintain himself. She was an Irish peer's widow, with a
jointure of L2000 a year.
A few months after his marriage, Chillingly Gordon effected insurances
on his wife's life, so as to secure himself an annuity of L1000 a year
in case of her decease. As she appeared to be a fine healthy woman,
some years younger than her husband, the deduction from his income
effected by the annual payments for the insurance seemed an
over-sacrifice of present enjoyment to future contingencies. The
result bore witness to his reputation for sagacity, as the lady died
in the second year of their wedding, a few months after the birth of
her only child, and of a heart-disease which had been latent to the
doctors, but which, no doubt, Gordon had affectionately discovered
before he had insured a life too valuable not to need some
compensation for its loss. He was now, then, in the possession of
L2500 a year, and was therefore very well off, in the pecuniary sense
of the phrase. He had, moreover, acquired a reputation which gave him
a social rank beyond that accorded to him by a discerning State. He
was considered a man of solid judgment, and his opinion upon all
matters, private and public, carried weight. The opinion itself,
critically examined, was not worth much, but the way he announced it
was imposing. Mr. Fox said that 'No one ever was so wise as Lord
Thurlow looked.' Lord Thurlow could not have looked wiser than Mr.
Chillingly Gordon. He had a square jaw and large red bushy eyebrows,
which he lowered down with great effect when he delivered judgment.
He had another advantage for acquiring grave reputation. He was a
very unpleasant man. He could be rude if you contradicted him; and as
few persons wish to provoke rudeness, so he was seldom contradicted.
Mr. Chillingly Mivers, another cadet of the house, was also
distinguished, but in a different way. He was a bachelor, now about
the age of thirty-five. He was eminent for a supreme well-bred
contempt for everybody and everything. He was the originator and
chief proprietor of a public journal called "The Londoner," which had
lately been set up on that principle of contempt, and we need not say,
was exceedingly popular with those leading members of the community
who admire nobody and believe in nothing. Mr. Chillingly Mivers was
regarded by himself and by others as a man who might have achieved the
highest success in any branch of literature, if he had deigned to
exhibit his talents therein. But he did not so deign, and therefore
he had full right to imply that, if he had written an epic, a drama, a
novel, a history, a metaphysical treatise, Milton, Shakspeare,
Cervantes, Hume, Berkeley would have been nowhere. He held greatly to
the dignity of the anonymous; and even in the journal which he
originated nobody could ever ascertain what he wrote. But, at all
events, Mr. Chillingly Mivers was what Mr. Chillingly Gordon was not;
namely, a very clever man, and by no means an unpleasant one in
general society.
The Rev. John Stalworth Chillingly was a decided adherent to the creed
of what is called "muscular Christianity," and a very fine specimen of
it too. A tall stout man with broad shoulders, and that division of
lower limb which intervenes between the knee and the ankle powerfully
developed. He would have knocked down a deist as soon as looked at
him. It is told by the Sieur de Joinville, in his Memoir of Louis,
the sainted king, that an assembly of divines and theologians convened
the Jews of an Oriental city for the purpose of arguing with them on
the truths of Christianity, and a certain knight, who was at that time
crippled, and supporting himself on crutches, asked and obtained
permission to be present at the debate. The Jews flocked to the
summons, when a prelate, selecting a learned rabbi, mildly put to him
the leading question whether he owned the divine conception of our
Lord. "Certainly not," replied the rabbi; whereon the pious knight,
shocked by such blasphemy, uplifted his crutch and felled the rabbi,
and then flung himself among the other misbelievers, whom he soon
dispersed in ignominious flight and in a very belaboured condition.
The conduct of the knight was reported to the sainted king, with a
request that it should be properly reprimanded; but the sainted king
delivered himself of this wise judgment:--
"If a pious knight is a very learned clerk, and can meet in fair
argument the doctrines of the misbeliever, by all means let him argue
fairly; but if a pious knight is not a learned clerk, and the argument
goes against him, then let the pious knight cut the discussion short
by the edge of his good sword."
The Rev. John Stalworth Chillingly was of the same opinion as Saint
Louis; otherwise, he was a mild and amiable man. He encouraged
cricket and other manly sports among his rural parishioners. He was a
skilful and bold rider, but he did not hunt; a convivial man--and took
his bottle freely. But his tastes in literature were of a refined and
peaceful character, contrasting therein the tendencies some might have
expected from his muscular development of Christianity. He was a
great reader of poetry, but he disliked Scott and Byron, whom he
considered flashy and noisy; he maintained that Pope was only a
versifier, and that the greatest poet in the language was Wordsworth;
he did not care much for the ancient classics; he refused all merit to
the French poets; he knew nothing of the Italian, but he dabbled in
German, and was inclined to bore one about the "Hermann and Dorothea"
of Goethe. He was married to a homely little wife, who revered him in
silence, and thought there would be no schism in the Church if he were
in his right place as Archbishop of Canterbury; in this opinion he
entirely agreed with his wife.
Besides these three male specimens of the Chillingly race, the fairer
sex was represented, in the absence of her ladyship, who still kept
her room, by three female Chillinglys, sisters of Sir Peter, and all
three spinsters. Perhaps one reason why they had remained single was,
that externally they were so like each other that a suitor must have
been puzzled which to choose, and may have been afraid that if he did
choose one, he should be caught next day kissing another one in
mistake. They were all tall, all thin, with long throats--and beneath
the throats a fine development of bone. They had all pale hair, pale
eyelids, pale eyes, and pale complexions. They all dressed exactly
alike, and their favourite colour was a vivid green: they were so
dressed on this occasion.
As there was such similitude in their persons, so, to an ordinary
observer, they were exactly the same in character and mind. Very well
behaved, with proper notions of female decorum: very distant and
reserved in manner to strangers; very affectionate to each other and
their relations or favourites; very good to the poor, whom they looked
upon as a different order of creation, and treated with that sort of
benevolence which humane people bestow upon dumb animals. Their minds
had been nourished on the same books--what one read the others had
read. The books were mainly divided into two classes,--novels, and
what they called "good books." They had a habit of taking a specimen
of each alternately; one day a novel, then a good book, then a novel
again, and so on. Thus if the imagination was overwarmed on Monday,
on Tuesday it was cooled down to a proper temperature; and if
frost-bitten on Tuesday, it took a tepid bath on Wednesday. The
novels they chose were indeed rarely of a nature to raise the
intellectual thermometer into blood heat: the heroes and heroines were
models of correct conduct. Mr. James's novels were then in vogue, and
they united in saying that those "were novels a father might allow his
daughters to read." But though an ordinary observer might have failed
to recognize any distinction between these three ladies, and, finding
them habitually dressed in green, would have said they were as much
alike as one pea is to another, they had their idiosyncratic
differences, when duly examined. Miss Margaret, the eldest, was the
commanding one of the three; it was she who regulated their household
(they all lived together), kept the joint purse, and decided every
doubtful point that arose: whether they should or should not ask Mrs.
So-and-so to tea; whether Mary should or should not be discharged;
whether or not they should go to Broadstairs or to Sandgate for the
month of October. In fact, Miss Margaret was the WILL of the body
corporate.
Miss Sibyl was of milder nature and more melancholy temperament; she
had a poetic turn of mind, and occasionally wrote verses. Some of
these had been printed on satin paper, and sold for objects of
beneficence at charity bazaars. The county newspapers said that the
verses "were characterized by all the elegance of a cultured and
feminine mind." The other two sisters agreed that Sibyl was the
genius of the household, but, like all geniuses, not sufficiently
practical for the world. Miss Sarah Chillingly, the youngest of the
three, and now just in her forty-fourth year, was looked upon by the
others as "a dear thing, inclined to be naughty, but such a darling
that nobody could have the heart to scold her." Miss Margaret said
"she was a giddy creature." Miss Sibyl wrote a poem on her, entitled,
"Warning to a young Lady against the Pleasures of the World." They
all called her Sally; the other two sisters had no diminutive
synonyms. Sally is a name indicative of fastness. But this Sally
would not have been thought fast in another household, and she was now
little likely to sally out of the one she belonged to. These sisters,
who were all many years older than Sir Peter, lived in a handsome,
old-fashioned, red-brick house, with a large garden at the back, in
the principal street of the capital of their native county. They had
each L10,000 for portion; and if he could have married all three, the
heir-at-law would have married them, and settled the aggregate L30,000
on himself. But we have not yet come to recognize Mormonism as legal,
though if our social progress continues to slide in the same grooves
as at present, Heaven only knows what triumphs over the prejudices of
our ancestors may not be achieved by the wisdom of our descendants!
CHAPTER III.
SIR PETER stood on his hearthstone, surveyed the guests seated in
semicircle, and said: "Friends,--in Parliament, before anything
affecting the fate of a Bill is discussed, it is, I believe, necessary
to introduce the Bill." He paused a moment, rang the bell, and said
to the servant who entered, "Tell Nurse to bring in the Baby."
Mr. CHILLINGLY GORDON.--"I don't see the necessity for that, Sir
Peter. We may take the existence of the Baby for granted."
Mr. MIVERS.--"It is an advantage to the reputation of Sir Peter's work
to preserve the incognito. /Omne ignotum pro magnifico/."
THE REV. JOHN STALWORTH CHILLINGLY.--"I don't approve the cynical
levity of such remarks. Of course we must all be anxious to see, in
the earliest stage of being, the future representative of our name and
race. Who would not wish to contemplate the source, however small, of
the Tigris or the Nile!--"
MISS SALLY (tittering).--"He! he!"
MISS MARGARET.--"For shame, you giddy thing!"
The Baby enters in the nurse's arms. All rise and gather round the
Baby with one exception,--Mr. Gordon, who has ceased to be
heir-at-law.
The Baby returned the gaze of its relations with the most contemptuous
indifference. Miss Sibyl was the first to pronounce an opinion on the
Baby's attributes. Said she, in a solemn whisper, "What a heavenly
mournful expression! it seems so grieved to have left the angels!"
THE REV. JOHN.--"That is prettily said, Cousin Sibyl; but the infant
must pluck up its courage and fight its way among mortals with a good
heart, if it wants to get back to the angels again. And I think it
will; a fine child." He took it from the nurse, and moving it
deliberately up and down, as if to weigh it, said cheerfully,
"Monstrous heavy! by the time it is twenty it will be a match for a
prize-fighter of fifteen stone!"
Therewith he strode to Gordon, who as if to show that he now
considered himself wholly apart from all interest in the affairs of a
family who had so ill-treated him in the birth of that Baby, had taken
up the "Times" newspaper and concealed his countenance beneath the
ample sheet. The Parson abruptly snatched away the "Times" with one
hand, and, with the other substituting to the indignant eyes of the
/ci-devant/ heir-at-law the spectacle of the Baby, said, "Kiss it."
"Kiss it!" echoed Chillingly Gordon, pushing back his chair--"kiss it!
pooh, sir, stand off! I never kissed my own baby: I shall not kiss
another man's. Take the thing away, sir: it is ugly; it has black
eyes."
Sir Peter, who was near-sighted, put on his spectacles and examined
the face of the new-born. "True," said he, "it has black eyes,--very
extraordinary: portentous: the first Chillingly that ever had black
eyes."
"Its mamma has black eyes," said Miss Margaret: "it takes after its
mamma; it has not the fair beauty of the Chillinglys, but it is not
ugly."
"Sweet infant!" sighed Sibyl; "and so good; does not cry."
"It has neither cried nor crowed since it was born," said the nurse;
"bless its little heart."
She took the Baby from the Parson's arms, and smoothed back the frill
of its cap, which had got ruffled.
"You may go now, Nurse," said Sir Peter.
CHAPTER IV.
"I AGREE with Mr. Shandy," said Sir Peter, resuming his stand on the
hearthstone, "that among the responsibilities of a parent the choice
of the name which his child is to bear for life is one of the gravest.
And this is especially so with those who belong to the order of
baronets. In the case of a peer his Christian name, fused into his
titular designation, disappears. In the case of a Mister, if his
baptismal be cacophonous or provocative of ridicule, he need not
ostentatiously parade it: he may drop it altogether on his visiting
cards, and may be imprinted as Mr. Jones instead of Mr. Ebenezer
Jones. In his signature, save where the forms of the law demand
Ebenezer in full, he may only use an initial and be your obedient
servant E. Jones, leaving it to be conjectured that E. stands for
Edward or Ernest,--names inoffensive, and not suggestive of a
Dissenting Chapel, like Ebenezer. If a man called Edward or Ernest be
detected in some youthful indiscretion, there is no indelible stain on
his moral character: but if an Ebenezer be so detected he is set down
as a hypocrite; it produces that shock on the public mind which is
felt when a professed saint is proved to be a bit of a sinner. But a
baronet never can escape from his baptismal: it cannot lie /perdu/; it
cannot shrink into an initial, it stands forth glaringly in the light
of day; christen him Ebenezer, and he is Sir Ebenezer in full, with
all its perilous consequences if he ever succumb to those temptations
to which even baronets are exposed. But, my friends, it is not only
the effect that the sound of a name has upon others which is to be
thoughtfully considered: the effect that his name produces on the man
himself is perhaps still more important. Some names stimulate and
encourage the owner; others deject and paralyze him: I am a melancholy
instance of that truth. Peter has been for many generations, as you
are aware, the baptismal to which the eldest-born of our family has
been devoted. On the altar of that name I have been sacrificed.
Never has there been a Sir Peter Chillingly who has, in any way,
distinguished himself above his fellows. That name has been a dead
weight on my intellectual energies. In the catalogue of illustrious
Englishmen there is, I think, no immortal Sir Peter, except Sir Peter
Teazle, and he only exists on the comic stage."
MISS SIBYL.--"Sir Peter Lely?"
SIR PETER CHILLINGLY.--"That painter was not an Englishman. He was
born in Westphalia, famous for hams. I confine my remarks to the
children of our native land. I am aware that in foreign countries the
name is not an extinguisher to the genius of its owner. But why? In
other countries its sound is modified. Pierre Corneille was a great
man; but I put it to you whether, had he been an Englishman, he could
have been the father of European tragedy as Peter Crow?"