Kenelm Chillingly — Complete

Sir Peter here led the way to the family tree—a goodly roll of parchment, with the arms of the family emblazoned at the top. Those arms were simple, as ancient heraldic coats are,—three fishes argent on a field azure; the crest a mermaid’s head. All flocked to inspect the pedigree except Mr. Gordon, who resumed the “Times” newspaper.

“I never could quite make out what kind of fishes these are,” said the Rev. John Stalworth. “They are certainly not pike which formed the emblematic blazon of the Hotofts, and are still grim enough to frighten future Shakspeares on the scutcheon of the Warwickshire Lucys.”

“I believe they are tenches,” said Mr. Mivers. “The tench is a fish that knows how to keep itself safe by a philosophical taste for an obscure existence in deep holes and slush.”

SIR PETER.—“No, Mivers; the fishes are dace, a fish that, once introduced into any pond, never can be got out again. You may drag the water; you may let off the water; you may say, ‘Those dace are extirpated,’—vain thought!—the dace reappear as before; and in this respect the arms are really emblematic of the family. All the disorders and revolutions that have occurred in England since the Heptarchy have left the Chillinglys the same race in the same place. Somehow or other the Norman Conquest did not despoil them; they held fiefs under Eudo Dapifer as peacefully as they had held them under King Harold; they took no part in the Crusades, nor the Wars of the Roses, nor the Civil Wars between Charles the First and the Parliament. As the dace sticks to the water and the water sticks by the dace, so the Chillinglys stuck to the land and the land stuck by the Chillinglys. Perhaps I am wrong to wish that the new Chillingly may be a little less like a dace.”

“Oh!” cried Miss Margaret, who, mounted on a chair, had been inspecting the pedigree through an eye-glass, “I don’t see a fine Christian name from the beginning, except Oliver.”

SIR PETER.—“That Chillingly was born in Oliver Cromwell’s Protectorate, and named Oliver in compliment to him, as his father, born in the reign of James I., was christened James. The three fishes always swam with the stream. Oliver!—Oliver not a bad name, but significant of radical doctrines.”

Mr. MIVERS.—“I don’t think so. Oliver Cromwell made short work of radicals and their doctrines; but perhaps we can find a name less awful and revolutionary.”

“I have it! I have it!” cried the Parson. “Here is a descent from Sir Kenelm Digby and Venetia Stanley. Sir Kenelm Digby! No finer specimen of muscular Christianity. He fought as well as he wrote; eccentric, it is true, but always a gentleman. Call the boy Kenelm!”

“A sweet name,” said Miss Sibyl: “it breathes of romance.”

“Sir Kenelm Chillingly! It sounds well,—imposing!” said Miss Margaret.

“And,” remarked Mr. Mivers, “it has this advantage—that while it has sufficient association with honourable distinction to affect the mind of the namesake and rouse his emulation, it is not that of so stupendous a personage as to defy rivalry. Sir Kenelm Digby was certainly an accomplished and gallant gentleman; but what with his silly superstition about sympathetic powders, etc., any man nowadays might be clever in comparison without being a prodigy. Yes, let us decide on Kenelm.”

Sir Peter meditated. “Certainly,” said he, after a pause, “certainly the name of Kenelm carries with it very crotchety associations; and I am afraid that Sir Kenelm Digby did not make a prudent choice in marriage. The fair Venetia was no better than she should be; and I should wish my heir not to be led away by beauty but wed a woman of respectable character and decorous conduct.”

Miss MARGARET.—“A British matron, of course!”

THREE SISTERS (in chorus).—“Of course! of course!”

“But,” resumed Sir Peter, “I am crotchety myself, and crotchets are innocent things enough; and as for marriage the Baby cannot marry to-morrow, so that we have ample time to consider that matter. Kenelm Digby was a man any family might be proud of; and, as you say, sister Margaret, Kenelm Chillingly does not sound amiss: Kenelm Chillingly it shall be!”

The Baby was accordingly christened Kenelm, after which ceremony its face grew longer than before.

CHAPTER V

BEFORE his relations dispersed, Sir Peter summoned Mr. Gordon into his library.

“Cousin,” said he, kindly, “I do not blame you for the want of family affection, or even of humane interest, which you exhibit towards the New-born.”

“Blame me, Cousin Peter! I should think not. I exhibit as much family affection and humane interest as could be expected from me,—circumstances considered.”

“I own,” said Sir Peter, with all his wonted mildness, “that after remaining childless for fourteen years of wedded life, the advent of this little stranger must have occasioned you a disagreeable surprise. But, after all, as I am many years younger than you, and in the course of nature shall outlive you, the loss is less to yourself than to your son, and upon that I wish to say a few words. You know too well the conditions on which I hold my estate not to be aware that I have not legally the power to saddle it with any bequest to your boy. The New-born succeeds to the fee-simple as last in tail. But I intend, from this moment, to lay by something every year for your son out of my income; and, fond as I am of London for a part of the year, I shall now give up my town-house. If I live to the years the Psalmist allots to man, I shall thus accumulate something handsome for your son, which may be taken in the way of compensation.”

Mr. Gordon was by no means softened by this generous speech. However, he answered more politely than was his wont, “My son will be very much obliged to you, should he ever need your intended bequest.” Pausing a moment, he added with a cheerful smile, “A large percentage of infants die before attaining the age of twenty-one.”

“Nay, but I am told your son is an uncommonly fine healthy child.”

“My son, Cousin Peter! I was not thinking of my son, but of yours. Yours has a big head. I should not wonder if he had water in it. I don’t wish to alarm you, but he may go off any day, and in that case it is not likely that Lady Chillingly will condescend to replace him. So you will excuse me if I still keep a watchful eye on my rights; and, however painful to my feelings, I must still dispute your right to cut a stick of the field timber.”

“That is nonsense, Gordon. I am tenant for life without impeachment of waste, and can cut down all timber not ornamental.”

“I advise you not, Cousin Peter. I have told you before that I shall try the question at law, should you provoke it, amicably, of course. Rights are rights; and if I am driven to maintain mine, I trust that you are of a mind too liberal to allow your family affection for me and mine to be influenced by a decree of the Court of Chancery. But my fly is waiting. I must not miss the train.”

“Well, good-by, Gordon. Shake hands.”

“Shake hands!—of course, of course. By the by, as I came through the lodge, it seemed to me sadly out of repair. I believe you are liable for dilapidations. Good-by.”

“The man is a hog in armour,” soliloquized Sir Peter, when his cousin was gone; “and if it be hard to drive a common pig in the way he don’t choose to go, a hog in armour is indeed undrivable. But his boy ought not to suffer for his father’s hoggishness; and I shall begin at once to see what I can lay by for him. After all, it is hard upon Gordon. Poor Gordon; poor fellow! poor fellow! Still I hope he will not go to law with me. I hate law. And a worm will turn, especially a worm that is put into Chancery.”

CHAPTER VI

DESPITE the sinister semi-predictions of the ci-devant heir-at-law, the youthful Chillingly passed with safety, and indeed with dignity, through the infant stages of existence. He took his measles and whooping-cough with philosophical equanimity. He gradually acquired the use of speech, but he did not too lavishly exercise that special attribute of humanity. During the earlier years of childhood he spoke as little as if he had been prematurely trained in the school of Pythagoras. But he evidently spoke the less in order to reflect the more. He observed closely and pondered deeply over what he observed. At the age of eight he began to converse more freely, and it was in that year that he startled his mother with the question, “Mamma, are you not sometimes overpowered by the sense of your own identity?”

Lady Chillingly,—I was about to say rushed, but Lady Chillingly never rushed,—Lady Chillingly glided less sedately than her wont to Sir Peter, and repeating her son’s question, said, “The boy is growing troublesome, too wise for any woman: he must go to school.”

Sir Peter was of the same opinion. But where on earth did the child get hold of so long a word as “identity,” and how did so extraordinary and puzzling a metaphysical question come into his head? Sir Peter summoned Kenelm, and ascertained that the boy, having free access to the library, had fastened upon Locke on the Human Understanding, and was prepared to dispute with that philosopher upon the doctrine of innate ideas. Quoth Kenelm, gravely, “A want is an idea; and if, as soon as I was born, I felt the want of food and knew at once where to turn for it, without being taught, surely I came into the world with an ‘innate idea.’”

Sir Peter, though he dabbled in metaphysics, was posed, and scratched his head without getting out a proper answer as to the distinction between ideas and instincts. “My child,” he said at last, “you don’t know what you are talking about: go and take a good gallop on your black pony; and I forbid you to read any books that are not given to you by myself or your mamma. Stick to ‘Puss in Boots.’”

CHAPTER VII

SIR PETER ordered his carriage and drove to the house of the stout parson. That doughty ecclesiastic held a family living a few miles distant from the Hall, and was the only one of the cousins with whom Sir Peter habitually communed on his domestic affairs.

He found the Parson in his study, which exhibited tastes other than clerical. Over the chimney-piece were ranged fencing-foils, boxing-gloves, and staffs for the athletic exercise of single-stick; cricket-bats and fishing-rods filled up the angles. There were sundry prints on the walls: one of Mr. Wordsworth, flanked by two of distinguished race-horses; one of a Leicestershire short-horn, with which the Parson, who farmed his own glebe and bred cattle in its rich pastures, had won a prize at the county show; and on either side of that animal were the portraits of Hooker and Jeremy Taylor. There were dwarf book-cases containing miscellaneous works very handsomely bound; at the open window, a stand of flower-pots, the flowers in full bloom. The Parson’s flowers were famous.

The appearance of the whole room was that of a man who is tidy and neat in his habits.

“Cousin,” said Sir Peter, “I have come to consult you.” And therewith he related the marvellous precocity of Kenelm Chillingly. “You see the name begins to work on him rather too much. He must go to school; and now what school shall it be? Private or public?”

THE REV. JOHN STALWORTH.—“There is a great deal to be said for or against either. At a public school the chances are that Kenelm will no longer be overpowered by a sense of his own identity; he will more probably lose identity altogether. The worst of a public school is that a sort of common character is substituted for individual character. The master, of course, can’t attend to the separate development of each boy’s idiosyncrasy. All minds are thrown into one great mould, and come out of it more or less in the same form. An Etonian may be clever or stupid, but, as either, he remains emphatically Etonian. A public school ripens talent, but its tendency is to stifle genius. Then, too, a public school for an only son, heir to a good estate, which will be entirely at his own disposal, is apt to encourage reckless and extravagant habits; and your estate requires careful management, and leaves no margin for an heir’s notes-of-hand and post-obits. On the whole, I am against a public school for Kenelm.”

“Well then, we will decide on a private one.”

“Hold!” said the Parson: “a private school has its drawbacks. You can seldom produce large fishes in small ponds. In private schools the competition is narrowed, the energies stinted. The schoolmaster’s wife interferes, and generally coddles the boys. There is not manliness enough in those academies; no fagging, and very little fighting. A clever boy turns out a prig; a boy of feebler intellect turns out a well-behaved young lady in trousers. Nothing muscular in the system. Decidedly the namesake and descendant of Kenelm Digby should not go to a private seminary.”

“So far as I gather from your reasoning,” said Sir Peter, with characteristic placidity, “Kenelm Chillingly is not to go to school at all.”

“It does look like it,” said the Parson, candidly; “but, on consideration, there is a medium. There are schools which unite the best qualities of public and private schools, large enough to stimulate and develop energies mental and physical, yet not so framed as to melt all character in one crucible. For instance, there is a school which has at this moment one of the first scholars in Europe for head-master,—a school which has turned out some of the most remarkable men of the rising generation. The master sees at a glance if a boy be clever, and takes pains with him accordingly. He is not a mere teacher of hexameters and sapphics. His learning embraces all literature, ancient and modern. He is a good writer and a fine critic; admires Wordsworth. He winks at fighting: his boys know how to use their fists; and they are not in the habit of signing post-obits before they are fifteen. Merton School is the place for Kenelm.”

“Thank you,” said Sir Peter. “It is a great comfort in life to find somebody who can decide for one. I am an irresolute man myself, and in ordinary matters willingly let Lady Chillingly govern me.”

“I should like to see a wife govern me,” said the stout Parson.

“But you are not married to Lady Chillingly. And now let us go into the garden and look at your dahlias.”

CHAPTER VIII

THE youthful confuter of Locke was despatched to Merton School, and ranked, according to his merits, as lag of the penultimate form. When he came home for the Christmas holidays he was more saturnine than ever; in fact, his countenance bore the impression of some absorbing grief. He said, however, that he liked school very well, and eluded all other questions. But early the next morning he mounted his black pony and rode to the Parson’s rectory. The reverend gentleman was in his farmyard examining his bullocks when Kenelm accosted him thus briefly,—

“Sir, I am disgraced, and I shall die of it if you cannot help to set me right in my own eyes.”