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and David Widger
IT is somewhat more than a year and a half since Kenelm Chillinglyleft England, and the scene now is in London, during that earlier andmore sociable season which precedes the Easter holidays,—season inwhich the charm of intellectual companionship is not yet withered awayin the heated atmosphere of crowded rooms,—season in which partiesare small, and conversation extends beyond the interchange ofcommonplace with one's next neighbour at a dinner-table,—season inwhich you have a fair chance of finding your warmest friends notabsorbed by the superior claims of their chilliest acquaintances.
There was what is called a /conversazione/ at the house of one ofthose Whig noblemen who yet retain the graceful art of bringingagreeable people together, and collecting round them the truearistocracy, which combines letters and art and science withhereditary rank and political distinction,—that art which was thehappy secret of the Lansdownes and Hollands of the last generation.Lord Beaumanoir was himself a genial, well-read man, a good judge ofart, and a pleasant talker. He had a charming wife, devoted to himand to her children, but with enough love of general approbation tomake herself as popular in the fashionable world as if she sought inits gayeties a refuge from the dulness of domestic life.
Amongst the guests at the Beaumanoirs, this evening were two men,seated apart in a small room, and conversing familiarly. The onemight be about fifty-four; he was tall, strongly built, but notcorpulent, somewhat bald, with black eyebrows, dark eyes, bright andkeen, mobile lips round which there played a shrewd and sometimessarcastic smile.
This gentleman, the Right Hon. Gerard Danvers, was a very influentialmember of Parliament. He had, when young for English public life,attained to high office; but—partly from a great distaste to thedrudgery of administration; partly from a pride of temperament, whichunfitted him for the subordination that a Cabinet owes to its chief;partly, also, from a not uncommon kind of epicurean philosophy, atonce joyous and cynical, which sought the pleasures of life and heldvery cheap its honours—he had obstinately declined to re-enteroffice, and only spoke on rare occasions. On such occasions hecarried great weight, and, by the brief expression of his opinions,commanded more votes than many an orator infinitely more eloquent.Despite his want of ambition, he was fond of power in his ownway,—power over the people who /had/ power; and, in the love ofpolitical intrigue, he found an amusement for an intellect very subtleand very active. At this moment he was bent on a new combinationamong the leaders of different sections in the same party, by whichcertain veterans were to retire, and certain younger men to beadmitted into the Administration. It was an amiable feature in hischaracter that he had a sympathy with the young, and had helped tobring into Parliament, as well as into office, some of the ablest of ageneration later than his own. He gave them sensible counsel, waspleased when they succeeded, and encouraged them when theyfailed,—always provided that they had stuff enough in them to redeemthe failure; if not, he gently dropped them from his intimacy, butmaintained sufficiently familiar terms with them to be pretty surethat he could influence their votes whenever he so desired.
The gentleman with whom he was now conversing was young, aboutfive-and-twenty; not yet in Parliament, but with an intense desire toobtain a seat in it, and with one of those reputations which a youthcarries awa