Hugh Kenrick Page 12

  He was deep in his own thoughts when he noticed a silence. The music had stopped. Curious, he left his room and stole downstairs. He managed to avoid being spotted by the servants and got to the gallery that overlooked the ballroom in his uncle’s part of the mansion. It was crowded with men in red uniforms, the band on loan from the Lord Lieutenant of Dorset. Their musical instruments were at rest. No one noticed him. The musicians, like the glittering assembly below, were listening to someone recite a poem. Hugh crept to the oak railing and looked down.

  Lieutenant-Colonel James Wolfe, resplendent in his uniform, stood holding up a book, gesticulating with his free hand, reading a poem. He was a tall, rangy, almost homely man, but had an intent, expressive face as sharp as Hugh’s uncle’s. Cumberland stood to one side of the officer, Maud Harris on his arm, and the Earl and some of the Duke’s retinue on the other. Hugh saw his father and mother in the attentive crowd.

  “‘The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,

  And all that beauty, all that wealth e’er gave

  Awaits alike the inevitable hour—

  The paths of glory lead but to the grave.’”

  Hugh recognized the poem, Thomas Gray’s “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard,” and remembered reading it to his mother after the stillbirth the summer past, but hearing it recited by another caused him to think of it now in a new light.

  When Wolfe was finished and bowed in acknowledgment of the company’s applause, Hugh withdrew from the gallery and walked back to his room. His mother must have given a signal to the musicians, for the halls now rang with a jaunty country-dance. He thought two things: first, he realized now that it had been an inappropriate poem to have read to his mother—even though it had been at her request—taking together the loss of his would-be brother and the subject of the poem, the death of a young man.

  And he thought that while it was a touching comment on unrealized potential, it granted too much solace to the unsought-for potential that the late young man had never realized. He had the sense that the poem was an envious lament for the undifferentiated. He wondered why so many people who sought beauty, wealth and glory placed so much importance on a poem that denigrated those things.

  When he reached his room, Hugh sat down and wrote in his notebook: “It is not the silent dust to which honor speaks. It is not the dull, cold ear of death that honor seeks to bend. A mind, pregnant with celestial fire, hurtles ahead, and will, in time, find its kith and kin.”

  This was to become the form in which he would address an insensate world—to himself, in a diary.

  He watched the fireworks, which had been arranged by men his uncle had hired in London, from the balcony of his room. The explosions, though spectacular, lit up nothing but a ceiling of clouds and the crowd of townsfolk collected on the front lawn to watch them.

  * * *

  On the next morning, the Duke and his entourage departed with less fanfare than had marked their arrival. They were headed now for Weymouth. Hugh was awakened by the noise and clatter of men, horses, and carriages as preparations were made to depart. He stole from his room in his nightshirt to the roof and watched.

  The Kenricks, Benjamin Worley, and Otis Talbot stood on the broad front steps and watched the great train retreat down the estate road. When it was out of sight, Effney Kenrick turned and went up two of the steps. She folded her blue silk fan, snapped it in half, let the halves drop to the stone, and trod on them as she went inside to give the servants instructions to clean up the house.

  “It was a great affair,” announced the Earl to no one in particular.

  “It was,” answered his brother noncommittally.

  “The Duke is a magnificent man. Strange company he keeps, though. An officer who recites poetry! Mark me, he won’t go far. No ‘paths of glory’ will be trod by that lad!”

  “He recited the poem at the request of the Duke. Surely a recommendation. Besides, he frowns on flogging,” remarked the Baron. “He would prefer to lead dedicated, not desiccated, soldiers. His very words.”

  The Earl merely sniffed at the allusion. “And that Harle—too high-minded for a commoner.”

  “Commoners usually exhibit more sense than their betters,” said the Baron. “I liked him.”

  From that day onward, there existed a tension in the Danvers home, composed of muted animosity, on the part of the Baron and Baroness toward the Earl, and of resentment that clothed itself in studied arrogance and boredom, on the part of the Earl toward his brother. They dined together, traveled together, shared tea and played cards together, as usual, but never forgotten was the punishment. Hugh sensed the tension, did not understand it, but did not inquire about it, for these were adult matters, and he had little time for them.

  One consequence of Hugh’s punishment was that he was not permitted to sit with his family on Sundays during services at St. Quarrell’s. He was sent, alone, to the second service in late afternoon. He sat by himself in the family pew box, across from the altar, a solitary figure in full view of the congregation. When the time came in the ritual to shake hands with one’s company, there was no one for him to turn to. Hugh did not mind this; the sermons, the hymns, the groans of the organ all rushed past his consciousness like the water of a rapids. Vicar Wynne, aloft in his great gilded, canopied pulpit, observed Hugh’s isolation with, at first, some satisfaction, then with disapproval, for while the boy looked attentive, his mind seemed to be elsewhere. His attentiveness seemed to be focused on things of his own concern and not of the congregation.

  * * *

  The London Gazette, the government’s chief official organ, a week after the event reported the injury to and repair of the Duke of Cumberland’s esteem at Danvers in a short notice buried in a flurry of other notices of both graver and less-than-noteworthy importance. It generated some gossip about the incident, but not as much as the Earl had feared.

  The army contract, however, was pared from its original exclusivity to half a dozen contracts doled out by the commissariat. In March, Danvers received an order for enough wool that would, when factored, clothe a mere regiment, not an army. The Earl wrote Sir Everard, asking for an explanation. That gentleman’s secretary replied that Sir Everard had gone to the Continent for a rest cure. The Earl fumed and snapped at his servants, and even at his brother, for he knew that the other awardees even collectively had not gone to a tenth of the bother and expense to win their parts of the contract.

  The Baron observed his brother’s anger dispassionately and without comment, for he had warned him about the likely outcome. While they awaited word, the Baron’s only other caution was “I reiterate my remark on the Duke’s gallery of applicants, dear brother. There are, as you must know, more applicants than there are seats.” While he was a loyal subject of the Crown, Garnet Kenrick was pleased with the awards; he wanted as little as possible to do with government obligations. He was more concerned with repairing the injury to the Earl’s solvency.

  * * *

  It was a time when a desire for solitude was a mark of one of three egregious maladies: madness, genius, or eccentricity. Life, especially that of an aristocrat, was governed by communal and public affairs. One did not shy away from society; it was considered an inferred punishment for society to shy away from any species of loner. This custom was lost on Hugh Kenrick; solitude was not a punishment. He learned to savor it; to be alone with his thoughts, with his own being. He was almost sorry that his uncle had relented and reduced his sentence. For four months, his life became a routine, almost a ritual: he would rise in the morning, have his breakfast, be driven to the Tallmadges, for tutoring, be driven home again, complete his assigned lessons, be served dinner, read on his own account, and sleep. His room for those four months became the core of his known universe. He was only partly aware of the value of his enforced solitude, of the unconscious gathering together of all the cords of his soul and their tying together into a knot that would never unravel and never be loosened by anyone. He would occasionall
y, idly launch his brass top, and watch it balance itself. It stood humming, turning, erect by its own rules. And though he read other books, he would reread Hyperborea many times, trying to glean the gist of its many facets. The novelty of the story led his mind down so many exciting paths, and opened up vistas of ideas that were tantalizingly sharp but somehow beyond his grasp. He came to regard Hyperborea as a personal possession, as something that had been written exclusively for him.

  On the last day of May, he sat again for dinner with his parents and uncle. The occasion was marked by no mention of or reference to his former absence.

  Hugh was never told of his uncle’s role in the punishment, nor why its duration had been shortened.

  * * *

  “I read yesterday in the Weekly Register,” remarked Garnet Kenrick, “that some colonial—a Quaker, no less—claims to have tamed lightning, bidding it to strike where he pleases it to, with the aid of a kite.”

  “There is a report in the Daily Auditor,” mused Effney Kenrick, “that a farmer has discovered the remains of Pompeii, buried under a league of ash.”

  “Hillier reports,” sniffed the Earl, “that the Parliament’s journals are to be printed now. Now any cretin with half a skull can read them.” He added, “They say in Lords that Clive will take Arcot some time soon.”

  “Lady Ornsby writes me from London that she has browsed through the new French Encyclopédie,” said the Baroness, “and says that it will be superior to Chambers’, once it is finished.”

  “The scrivenings of radical rogues,” grumbled the Earl. “Even here, they can’t be avoided. This Henry Fielding person, I have heard, basks in the scandal of this new history of his—John Jones, or Tom Jones—even the title is common and dull. Vicar Wynne has informed me that he shall preach against it soon, as his father preached against Moll Flanders.”

  The Baron and Baroness exchanged tactful glances about the irrelevancy of this comment. The silent remark did not go unnoticed by their son.

  Hugh said nothing, and ate what was put before him.

  Basil Kenrick rarely spoke to him, and when he did, spoke with obvious effort and control. The fact that the boy had elected to endure punishment rather than apologize to the Duke not only superseded his outrage at Hugh’s behavior, but became the kernel of another species of odium. He could be persuaded to forgive forgetfulness and even ignorance; he would not countenance willful impertinence, and was closed to argument.

  And in the deepest recesses of his soul, buried under an embarrassment for the barely acknowledged absurdity of the notion, and wrapped in a contempt for himself for harboring it, the Earl feared his nephew. One evening soon after Hugh resumed his regular place in the life of the estate, his valet heard the Earl mutter to himself: “I should have made him kiss the rod with which he was beaten. I wish to humble that boy. He will be Earl some day.”

  Chapter 9: The Portrait

  “MAY YOU LIVE AS LONG AS YOU ARE FIT TO LIVE, BUT NO LONGER! Or may you rather die before you cease to be fit to live, than after!”

  So wrote Philip Dormer Stanhope, Lord Chesterfield, to his illegitimate son in 1749. Hugh Kenrick might have pondered this frank bit of wisdom, and eventually concurred, had his father the leisure to compose such a thought.

  A boy born into the aristocracy was driven against the very thing that was his milieu. The impetus was a multitude of assumptions that were to be taken for granted and never questioned. Such an aristocrat naturally presumed that all the privileges that he enjoyed were his by right. He could adopt his rank’s vices and banalities, or be repelled by them. He could patronize those who wished to be aristocrats, but were not; or he could debunk or spurn them. He had the advantage of education, if he chose to use it; or he could become a notorious rake and profligate who perhaps had once read Pliny and mastered a complex mathematics, but to no observable consequence. He could be hurled against the wall of aristocratic demands like a meteor, and either be incinerated or deflected by the atmosphere of privilege and noblesse oblige. Either way, he would be destroyed as a man; either way, he was destined to become an aristocrat.

  Hugh Kenrick seemed to take neither course, but still became an aristocrat—by his own definition. He had a notion of what it meant to be fit to live; that is, he sensed that a definition of fitness was necessary, but was certain that none would be offered by any adult. And he did not think in terms of fitness; rather of a purpose for living, a reason, or an end, and this purpose, reason, or end had to be fit first.

  * * *

  The Earl decided to have the family’s portraits painted: one of his family, and individual portraits. Emery Westcott, a fashionable portraitist in London, was commissioned by the Earl and came to live at Danvers one summer while he recorded the likenesses of the family. The Earl also wished him to do renderings of the estate. “The portraits must be imposing, the grounds made more picturesque than they are.”

  Westcott assured the Earl that he would have difficulty improving on so picturesque a setting.

  “None of your faddle, sir,” rebuked the Earl. “I’m told you could make this grotesque Samuel Johnson creature look like a Greek god. Now, get on with you. I’ve spoken with you longer than I should.”

  Westcott set up a studio in one of the larger guest rooms in the mansion. Because he was a commoner, he was not permitted to dine with the family—at least not with the Earl, who spoke to him but never again with him. The artist accepted the slight; he knew he was a mere practitioner. Garnet Kenrick and his wife, however, shared frequent meals with him in his room, for they found him to be charming, witty, and a storehouse of gossip and information about London society.

  The most difficult task for Emery Westcott was not the Earl, but the boy. There was the boy himself, whose piercing green eyes gave him the most trouble. He winced every time he saw them. They disturbed him in a way he could not name. But he bravely tackled them at every sitting. The face was mature and wise beyond its years. Then there were the objects in the picture—a stigmatized book, a brass top, and a plaque on a wall. The boy had had some instruction in composition from a tutor, and had recommended those props; had, in fact, insisted that his portrait be of him at his own desk. Westcott had originally intended a conventional out-of-doors setting for Hugh Kenrick, on the grounds of the estate, with the boy standing placidly with a hoop and stick, or some other toy suitably diverting for a boy of that age. But Westcott admitted to himself that the boy’s suggestions were singular. He had asked the Baron and Baroness about their son’s ideas, and whether they would insist on a standard setting. The parents had sided with Hugh, saying that it was their son’s decision. “It is his wish to be remembered that way, Mr. Westcott,” remarked the Baron, who spoke as though the boy was the Earl himself.

  Westcott had painted many portraits of boys of Hugh’s age and rank, but found this time he did not need to turn an insolent sneer or vapid indifference into something pleasant to behold by the parents. Hugh was unique. Westcott tried to ignore the eyes, to convince himself that there was nothing special about them. But he could not ignore them; the subject would not let him.

  When he had finished placing the objects that would be a part of the portrait, the artist asked his subject, “Why do you wish to include the top, milord?” He paused. “I ask this so that I may better understand its place in the portrait.”

  “Because, when it is set in motion, it stands by its own rules. Then it is not an inert thing, like a tree or a rock.”

  Westcott had smiled. “Ah! But your hand must set it in motion, milord. So it cannot be as independent as you say.”

  “It is the symbol of a soul, Mr. Westcott. Or of a mind. Every man has one, and it is like a top, fashioned by himself. He must keep it upright, by his own hand. He must exert the effort. Otherwise it will topple, and lay inert and useless within himself, not a living thing at all. Or another hand may set it in motion, and then he will have no say in its motion or course.” Hugh paused. “This top has sentimental value to me,
sir, and I wish to remember it.”

  Westcott hummed thoughtfully to himself. “Interesting analogy, milord. It recalls a sermon I heard recently, about how Sir Newton’s laws of nature confirm, rather than dispute, the actions of an all-wise Overseer.” He paused. “Do you plan to take orders, when you have attained your majority?”

  “Excuse me, sir?”

  “Do you wish to become a shepherd of souls? A minister of our church?”

  “No,” replied Hugh, frowning. “Why would I wish to?”

  “Your concern with souls, milord, invites me to believe that you ultimately may choose that path of occupation.”

  Hugh made a face of disgust. “No. I wish to become a man. One must become a man, first, before he can choose to be anything else.”

  Westcott did not again venture to discuss such weighty subjects with the boy. An unreasoning but accurate fear told him that to enquire further into the boy’s mind would lead him to confront matters too disturbing to contemplate.

  The boy also insisted on wearing a green frock coat. This Westcott could not argue against, for the coat matched the troublesome eyes.

  * * *

  Mr. Cole, who also tutored literature, assigned his charges the task of reading many famous authors, living and dead. He was particularly anxious that his students appreciate Alexander Pope’s Essay on Man, one of his favorite literary paeans.

  Hugh read the long poem, at first avidly, then with mixed feelings. On one hand, Pope exalted man and reason; on another, he derogated them. Hugh could not comprehend the dual purposes; he ascribed the composition to faulty knowledge, and said as much in a written critique of the piece required by Mr. Cole. In it Hugh would quote a line from the Essay, such as “Since life can little more supply, than just to look about us, and die” and then ask the question, “Does Mr. Pope mean that life is something like a Grand Tour, on which we see what great and wonderful and unusual things have been done, but that we should not presume to act to emulate them? How can Mr. Pope then hope for a ‘kingdom of the just,’ as he mentions in Epistle IV? Does not one act to attain justice? Just men are not mere spectators, but act to effect justice.” The critique was masterful in its synopsis, but its analysis confounded Mr. Cole, who began to wonder if Milord Kenrick was an example of some species of idiot savant. He did not know how to answer such questions or appraise such commentary, for he refused to concede the contradictions.