renown thrown on his name by the publication of the catalogue, Lord Tansor was well pleased.
The intellectual and artistic glories of the Duport Collection had come to him from his grandfather through his father. To whom would they now pass? How could they be transmitted, intact, to the next generation, and to the next, and to their heirs and descendants, and thus become a living symbol of the continuity that his soul craved? For still no heir had been vouchsafed to his union with the second Lady Tansor. In his Lordship’s mind, the completion of Dr Daunt’s work merely served to underscore his precarious dynastic position. His wife was now a poor stick of a woman, who meekly followed her husband around, in town and country, forlorn and ineffectual. There was, it seemed, no hope.
It was just at this time that Lord Tansor – egged on, I suspect, by his relative, Mrs Daunt – began to lavish signs of especial favour on the Rector’s son. What follows is based on information I obtained some years after the events described.
During the Long Vacation of 1839, Lord Tansor began to express the opinion that it would be good for his Rector’s son if he ‘ran around a little’, by which his Lordship meant to imply that a period of harmless leisure would not go amiss, even for so accomplished a scholar. He suggested that a few weeks spent at his house in Park-lane, whither he was himself about to repair with Lady Tansor, would be productive of useful amusement for the young man. The young man’s step-mamma fairly purred with delight to hear Lord Tansor expatiating so enthusiastically on what might be done for her step-son by way of a social education.
As to his future, once his time at the Varsity was over, the young man himself expressed a certain open- mindedness on the subject, which, doubtless, alarmed his father, but which may not have been displeasing to Lord Tansor, whose nods of tacit approval as the lad held forth on the various possibilities that might lie before him after taking his degree – none of which involved ordination, and one of which, a career in letters, went completely against his father’s inclinations – were observed and inwardly deplored by the helpless Rector.
That summer, Phoebus Daunt duly ‘ran around a little’ under the watchful eye of Lord Tansor. The debauchery was not excessive. A succession of tedious dinners in Park-lane, at which Cabinet ministers, political journalists of the more serious persuasion, distinguished ecclesiastics, military and naval magnates, and other public men, predominated; for light relief, an afternoon concert in the Park, or an expedition to the races (which he particularly enjoyed). Then to Cowes for some sailing and a round of dull parties. Lord Tansor would hold the flat of his right hand out stiffly, fingers and thumb closed tight together, arm bent at the elbow, just behind the boy’s back, as he introduced him. ‘Phoebus, my boy,’ – he had taken to calling him ‘my boy’ —‘this is Lord Cotterstock, my neighbour. He would like to meet you.’ ‘Phoebus, my boy, have you made the acquaintance yet of Mrs Gough-Palmer, wife of the Ambassador?’ ‘The Prime Minister will be down tomorrow, my boy, and I should like you to meet him.’ And Phoebus would meet them, and charm them, and generally reflect the rays of Lord Tansor’s good opinion of him like a mirror until everyone was convinced that he was the very best fellow alive.
And so it went on, for the rest of the vacation. On his return to Evenwood in September, he seemed quite the man about town: a little taller, with a gloss and a swagger about his manner that he had completely lacked as a schoolboy only a short time before. There was now a gloss, too, about his appearance, for Uncle Tansor had sent him off to his tailor and hatter, and his step-mamma quite caught her breath at the sight of the elegantly clad figure – in bright-blue frock-coat, checked trousers, chimney-pot hat, and sumptuous waistcoat, together with incipient Dundreary whiskers – that descended from his Lordship’s coach.
From then on, whenever he returned to Evenwood, the undergraduate would find himself immediately invited up to the great house to regale his patron with an account of how he had comported himself during the previous term. It was gratifying to his Lordship to hear how well the boy was regarded by his tutors, and what a great mark he was making on the University. A Fellowship surely beckoned, he told Uncle Tansor, though, speaking for himself, he did not feel that such a course quite accorded with his talents. Lord Tansor concurred. He had little time for University men in general, and would prefer to see the lad make his way in the great world of the metropolis. The lad himself could only agree.
Of the making of Phoebus Rainsford Daunt there seemed to be no end. With each passing month, Lord Tansor devised new ways to raise the young man up in the world, losing no opportunity to insinuate him into the best circles, and to put him in the way of meeting people who, like Lord Tansor himself,
On the last day of December 1840, in the midst of his final year at the University, Daunt attained his majority, and his Lordship saw fit to arrange a dinner party in his honour. It was a most dazzling affair. The dinner itself consisted of soups and fish, six
The guests, some thirty or so in number, had included, for the principal guest’s benefit, several literary figures; for Lord Tansor, a little against an innate prejudice towards the profession of writing, had been impressed by the dedication to literature that the young man was beginning to display. He would often come across the lad tucked away in a corner of the Library (in which he seemed to pass a great deal of his time when he was home), in rapt perusal of some volume or other. On several occasions he had even found him absorbed in one of Mr Southey’s turgid epics, and it would amaze Lord Tansor, on returning to the same spot an hour later, to discover the young man still engrossed – it being unaccountable to his Lordship that so much time and attention could be devoted to something so unutterably tedious. (He had once ventured to look into a volume of the Laureate’s,* and had sensibly determined never to do so again.) But there it was. Further, the boy had displayed some talent of his own in this department, having had a simpering ode in the style of Gray published in the
So up they had trotted to Evenwood, at Lord Tansor’s summons: Mr Horne, Mr Montgomery, Mr de Vere, and Mr Heraud,† and a few others of their ilk. They were not, it must be admitted, first-division talents; but Lord Tansor had been much satisfied, both by their presence and by their expressions of encouragement, when Master Phoebus was persuaded to bring out one or two of his own effusions for their perusal. The literary gentlemen appeared to think that the young man had the mind and ear – indeed, the vocation – of the born bard, which gratifyingly confirmed Lord Tansor’s view that he had been right to allow the young man his head in respect of a possible career. The author himself was also flattered by the kind attentions of Mr Henry Drago,* the distinguished reviewer and leading contributor to
Before Daunt had finished his studies at Cambridge, he had completed
Mrs Daunt, now established as the
