Dr Daunt replied that he saw no particular advantage in sending his son to school. ‘It would be unwise,’ he continued, ‘to expose him to circumstances which might well be injurious to him. He is able in many ways, but weak and easily led. It is better for him that he should remain here, under my care, until such time as he attains more discretion and application than he presently possesses.’
‘You are, perhaps, a little hard on him, sir,’ said Lord Tansor, stiffening slightly. ‘And you will permit me to say that I do not altogether concur with your plan. It is a bad thing for a boy to be shut up at home. A boy needs early exposure to the world, or it will go badly for him when he has to make his way in it – as your boy certainly must. It is my view, Dr Daunt, my
‘Of course I respect your Lordship’s opinion on this matter,’ said the Rector, insinuating as much assertion as he dared into his smiling response, ‘but you will allow, perhaps, that a father’s wishes on such a point must count for a great deal.’
He felt uneasy at even so hesitant a display of defiance towards his patron, and reflected to himself that the years had wrought much change in him, dulling his once fiery temper, and rendering him diplomatic where once he would have relished confrontation.
Lord Tansor allowed one of his threatening silences to descend on the conversation, and turned his eyes towards the dark outline of trees, now standing out blackly against the afterlight of the setting sun. With his hands clasped behind his back, and continuing to stare into the gathering darkness, he waited for a second or two before resuming.
‘Naturally, I could not insist upon usurping your wishes in respect of your son. You have the advantage of me as far as that goes.’ He meant Dr Daunt to take the point that he had no son of his own, and the rebuke that it implied. ‘Permit me to observe, however, that your new duties here will leave you little time to devote to the instruction of your son. Mr Tidy is able to do much of your work about the parish; but Sundays remain’ – it was his Lordship’s strict requirement that the Rector took all the Sunday services, and delivered the morning sermon —‘and I am surprised that you are able to contemplate no reduction in your other occupations to accommodate the task – the not inconsiderable task – that you have so kindly agreed to undertake.’
Dr Daunt realized where he was being led and, remembering that a patron can take away as well as bestow, conceded that some rearrangement of his responsibilities would be necessary.
‘I am glad we are in agreement,’ returned Lord Tansor, looking now straight into the Rector’s eye. ‘That being so, and having the interests of your son equally in mind, which I have recently had the pleasure of discussing with your wife, I venture to suggest that you might do worse than to put the boy up for Eton.’
It needed no elaboration from Lord Tansor for Dr Daunt to recognize that a decree had been pronounced. He made no further attempt to argue his case and, after some further discussion on the practical arrangements, finally assented to the proposal, with as much good grace as he could muster. Young Master Phoebus, then, would go to Eton, with which the Duport family had a long connexion.
The matter being settled, Lord Tansor wished Dr Daunt goodnight, and a safe journey home.
*[The idealized pastoral world evoked by Virgil’s
*[Antonio Verrio (c. 1639–1707), Italian decorative painter who settled in England in the early 1670s. He enjoyed much royal patronage, being employed at Windsor Castle, Whitehall Palace, and Hampton Court. He also worked at a number of great houses, including, besides Evenwood, Chatsworth and Burghley.
A DREAM OF THE IRON MASTER
DECEMBER, MDCCCXLVIII*
LINKS, ALWAYS LINKS; forged slowly in the mould, accumulating, entwining more subtly and stronger still under the Iron Master’s hand; growing ever longer and heavier until the chain of Fate – strong enough to hold even Great Leviathan down – becomes unbreakable. A casual act, a fortuitous occurrence, an unlooked-for consequence: they come together in a random dance, and then conjoin into adamantine permanence.DOWN comes the great unstoppable hammer. Clang! Clang! The links are forged; the chain runs out a little further. Closer, ever closer, until we are fast bound together.
We are born within months of each other, like millions of others. We take our first breath and open our eyes for the first time on the world, like millions of others. In our separate ways, and under our separate influences of instruction and example, we grow and are nourished, we learn and think, like millions of others. We should have remained immured in our separateness and disconnexion. But we two have been singled out by the Iron Master. We will be engineered and stamped with his mark that we may know each other, and the links will be coiled tight around us.
Out of a hard, dark northern place he came, with his papa and step-mamma, to settle – without the right of blood – into the paradise that should be mine; from the south, honey-warm in memory, I was brought back to England; and now we are to meet for the first time.
*[These paragraphs, written in darker ink than the rest, have been pasted into the text at this point.
11
Floreat*
The days of Dr Daunt’s dependence on surplice fees to pay for occasional luxuries might now be over; but since Lord Tansor had not felt it necessary to offer any degree of financial assistance in the furtherance of his desire that young Phoebus should be sent to Eton – merely furnishing a recommendation, not easily refused, to the Provost and Fellows that the boy should be found a place – it was impossible that the Rector’s son could be supported there as an Oppidan.† He must therefore be entered for a scholarship, despite the lowly standing of those who lived on the foundation. But the young man acquitted himself well, as was to be expected of one who had been so ably and constantly tutored, and in the year 1832 – when all was reformed‡ – became Daunt, KS, the most junior of the band of scholars provided for by the bounty of King Henry VI.
Thus the Iron Master threw us together, with fatal consequences for us both. On the very same day that Phoebus Daunt made his way south to Eton from Evenwood to begin his schooling, Edward Glyver travelled north from Sandchurch to commence his. Here, perhaps, I may give my faculties rest and quote directly from the recollections compiled by Daunt for the
by
P. RAINSFORD DAUNTI went to Eton, as a
